Partner Article

Wonga breach is another reason for GDPR

Up to 270,000 customers of Wonga, the payday loans company, may have had their personal data stolen in a data breach at the firm - including names, email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, the last four digits of card numbers and bank account numbers. A representative for Wonga has said that it is investigating ‘illegal and unauthorised’ access to data belonging to customers in the UK and Poland, and has started to contact borrowers to make them aware of the problem. The majority (245,000) of affected customers are thought to be from the UK. The company would not disclose where the breach had taken place.

“In what looks set to become one of the largest hacks in the UK, Wonga is the latest organisation in the data breach hotseat,” said Richard Henderson, global security strategost at end point security specialist Absolute. “Though Wonga has started contacting customers to notify them of the breach, there doesn’t seem to be much clarity over the exact scale of the attack and who exactly has been affected. Breaches have become inevitable, and it’s the next steps that will really make or break Wonga. If they get it wrong, their interest rates will be the least of their worries.

Henderson continued: “This highlights yet another reason GDPR can’t come quickly enough. With so many brands being breached so frequently, consumers need more stringent controls and protection in terms of detection and notification so that organisations start to take this threat seriously. With enforcement just over a year away, it really is disappointing to see organisations continuing to fail. These regulations will hopefully see security efforts tightened everywhere to ensure that every vulnerability is locked down, businesses have full insight into who holds their sensitive data and that it is protected no matter where it resides. Wonga must now take quick steps to analyse the exact cause of the breach, assure its stakeholders that any security gaps have been sufficiently plugged and help customers monitor their bank accounts for any unscrupulous activity, as some of them may unfortunately end up getting a lot more than they originally bargained for.”

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