National Australia Bank Sends Notices of Breach to 13000 Customers

• Thirteen thousand customers of the National Australia Bank have had the PII uploaded to 3rd party servers.
• The act was a result of a human error and is directly violating the bank’s data privacy policies.
• No usernames and passwords were compromised, so people don’t have to reset their accounts.

According to a Bloomberg report, the National Australia Bank Ltd. is currently circulating notices of a breach to 13000 of its customers, apologizing for the fact that they have had their personal information leaked due to a human error. As the financial institute points out, the incident comes in violation of their data security policies, and the full responsibility is attributed to them, so there’s no involvement of a third party. The compromised information includes the full names of the customers, their dates of birth, full contact details, and in some cases, the government-issued ID number or the driver’s license number.

The occurrence concerns the uploading of the above information to the servers that belong to two data service companies, so this is not a case of a hacking attempt or anything like that. However, and because the uploading of the client information took place without the required authorization, the NAB considers this a violation of their data privacy policies and treats the data as “compromised”. Still, and as no hackers got to access NAB’s systems, the customers’ login credentials remain unharmed, so this is not the time to panic for the clients of the bank.

No matter the fact, NAB has announced that they will cover all expenses that relate to monitoring the 13000 bank accounts for fraudulent activities, and they will provide every support to the customers who will now have to go through the tedious procedure of re-issuing their ID and driver’s licenses. So far, NAB’s rigorous security checks on the aforementioned accounts have not yielded any clear signs of trouble. Those who are approached by phishing actors via SMS are urged to call 132265 immediately, or send a message with the all details to “phish@nab.com.au”. If the PII of the 13000 customers leaks out to the darknet, it will most probably be used for phishing, so this remains the second most risky scenario after the first which is the direct bank account compromise.

As required by law, the bank has also notified the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner about the breach, so depending on the results of the investigation that is about to take place, we may see a fine being imposed to the NAB by the authorities. For now, NAB customers who feel unsure about what happened with their data can call the 24/7 support line at 132265, or +61 386419886 if they reside outside Australia. NAB is specifically keeping this line open during all days and times to provide support to the impacted customers.

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