Latitude Financial has confirmed that the cyber hack on its systems this month was far worse than originally thought with over 14m customer records stolen from its system including driver’s licence numbers, passport numbers and financial statements.
On March 16 Latitude Financial announced that personal data of only 325,000 customers had been stolen in the attack, significantly short of the actual figure. The attack is now one of the largest-known data breaches in Australia.
Latitude Data Breach Includes Driver License and Passport Numbers
The details stolen from Latitude include 7.9 million Australian and New Zealand driver's license numbers, 53,000 passport numbers and 6.1 million customer records. These records include information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth.
Latitude Financial Services is an Australian financial services company. The consumer lender offers personal loans and credit to customers shopping at stores.
“It is hugely disappointing that such a significant number of additional customers and applicants have been affected by this incident. We apologise unreservedly,” Latitude’s chief executive, Ahmed Fahour, said.
“We are committed to working closely with impacted customers and applicants to minimise the risk and disruption to them, including reimbursing the cost if they choose to replace their ID document.”
When the breach was discovered, the company took a number of systems offline and cannot currently assist customers with specific account enquiries. Fahour says employees are working around the clock to get systems back online.
Australian Government Deeply Concerned
Australian Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil on Monday expressed concern about the scale of information theft, and ordered the National Coordination Mechanism (NCM) to support government agencies in relation to the attack. She announced in a tweet how the Australian Government were deeply concerned.
When consumer lenders want to approve new customers for credit, they typically require a number of identification documents. Latitude offers a variety of credit options including personal loans, car loans and credit cards. The Latitude breach raises questions about how companies store data and why many businesses hold on to old customer records. As of the 6.1m customer records stolen, 5.7m were provided before 2013.
The attack is just one of the latest high profile data breaches. Earlier this year JD Sports, one of the largest sportswear and fashion retailers in the world, suffered a data breach on January 30th, 2023, which has potentially impacted 10 million customers.
