JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) has fallen victim to what could be one of the biggest hacks in history, exposing data belonging to 76 million households and 7 million small businesses. The bank, in a revelation Thursday, indicated that the hack collected names and email addresses, but no critical information such as accounts details, passwords, or social security numbers were stolen.
Reports had earlier come out that the bank, which is U.S. biggest bank, had be hacked by Russia, leading to investigations by law enforcement officials over the authenticity of such reports.
In the latest revelation, the bank has issued a statement saying that it hasn’t detected any serious compromises in relation to customers’ accounts. The bank further gave warning that any customer who notices any weird activities in their accounts should report forthwith. Accordingly, the customers won’t be liable for any transactions that they haven’t authorized so long as they make the necessary report promptly.
A further update by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) on the hack indicated that according to their findings, they believe there isn’t a need for the customers to change their account information or update passwords.
New York Times reported that the case has been taken by the FBI and the Secret Service and is currently undergoing investigations. It’s also said that some detectives have said that the case is quite challenging due to the fact that the hackers didn’t steal any money.
Neither JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) nor the investigating experts have been able to unearth who the hackers are, but there have been speculations that it could have originated from Russia or southern European nations.
The attackers targeted personal information and may have penetrated deep into the system through an employee’s computer.
Sources familiar with the matter have said that JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) has taken several measures, led my chief operating officer Matt Zames, to ensure the safety of customer accounts by blocking some that the preliminary investigations suspect to have been compromised. At the same time, the company is said to have reset employee passwords and asked all employees to ensure that they beef up their own security by ensuring that they log out of their systems and avoid using official email addresses for personal communications.
Zames also reiterated the need for every employee to regularly change passwords and ensure the use of passwords that aren’t easy to guess.
Things haven’t been cozy for many companies in the recent past. Target and Home Depot are some of the companies whose systems have been compromised by hackers. At target, the data relating to 110 million cardholders and other users were compromised while Home Depot’s data relating to 56 million cards were compromised in September.
