In a statement released by the largest telecommunications company in the United States, AT&T, they shared that they recently discovered a dataset for sale on the \u201cdark web\u201d that contained information for about 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former users, totaling approximately 73 million affected accounts.<\/p>\n
AT&T shared that the data released contained passcodes (PIN numbers) and Social Security numbers from 2019 or earlier and did not contain any other personal financial information or call history but could possibly include e-mail and mailing addresses, phone numbers and birthdates.<\/p>\n
AT&T has reached out to all customers via e-mail or mail to let them know of the breach and to reset their passcodes. If you\u2019re an AT&T customer, it\u2019s important to be highly critical of any e-mail asking you to change your password. Please make sure it is from AT&T, as it\u2019s suspected other cybercriminals will attempt to capitalize on this issue and send out fake e-mails with malicious links, hoping someone will click on them. If you\u2019re concerned it\u2019s a fake e-mail, call AT&T support and ask them to send another reset link while you\u2019re on the phone.<\/p>\n
As for the cause of the breach, it\u2019s still unknown whether the data breach originated from AT&T or one of its vendors, but AT&T has launched an investigation and will likely hire computer forensics specialists to find the cause of the incident.<\/p>\n
The organization will also have to scrub any installed malware out of the software that runs its customer account system without disrupting unaffected customers\u2019 service. Between the investigation, cleaning up the issues, lawsuits, legal fees and more, this will be an expensive issue to solve.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why at CMIT Solutions, we talk about being proactive with cybersecurity so often. While no solution is 100% impenetrable, most are strong enough to keep the majority of hackers out. It is way more costly to deal with the effects of a cyber-attack than it is to prevent one in the first place.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re concerned about the safety of your organization, request a FREE Security Assessment from our team of cybersecurity experts. We\u2019ll analyze your network so you can see if there are exposed entry points in your network that hackers could use to break in. We\u2019ll also advise on how to work with third-party vendors to ensure your and your customers\u2019 data is as secure as possible.<\/p>\n
Hackers will do whatever it takes to break into your network. Your job as the CEO is to do whatever it takes to keep them out. We are here to help! Click here<\/a> to book your Security Risk Assessment with one of our cybersecurity experts, or call our office at 469-453-6010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a statement released by the largest telecommunications company in the United…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":4094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-richardson-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t