Partner Article

Abta suffers data breach

The travel trade organisation Abta has suffered a breach to their website, and 43,000 of their customers may be affected. The hackers were able to access about 1,000 files which included person identity information of individuals who had made a complaint about an Abta-registered travel agent.

“The disgruntled Abta customers are going to have more to complain about after this most recent hack,” said Ross Brewer, vice president and managing director EMEA at LogRhythm. “As this breach highlights, companies need to be conscious of third parties they work with as they can end up being a chink in their armour that they aren’t aware of. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for suppliers or partners to fall short in terms of security, jeopardising the security of large organisations like Abta.

Brewer continued: “While it’s claimed that hackers were not able to access any financial information on this occasion, we’ve seen many times before how hackers can cause havoc with seemingly unimportant information, such as email addresses. Even “basic” information like this is a foot in the door for hackers attempting to access additional online accounts and get their hands on even more valuable data.

“Hackers are determined and it’s important that companies fight back with equal determination. Companies must have security intelligence that can identify and remediate any breaches as quickly as possible – whether they originate on their own networks or their partners’. Particularly with only a year until the GDPR comes into full effect, organisations need an end-to-end threat lifecycle management approach that will enable the fastest possible detection and response capabilities, so they can neutralise advanced cyber threats. If businesses aren’t continuously monitoring their networks and focusing on threat detection, then they need to start doing so, or they will be putting the security of their entire network at risk,” concluded Brewer.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by LogRhythm .