Dido Harding, Chief exec at TalkTalk, has put a price on the cost of the recent cyber attack, estimating one-off costs at between £30m and £35m.
Advertisement
“Anyone with TalkTalk still needs to be on their guard: keep an eye on your credit report (TalkTalk gave all customers free access) and bank statement, be suspicious of calls and emails supposedly from TalkTalk and if you used your account password anywhere else make sure you change it”.
The company said last month: “Our ongoing forensic analysis of the site confirms that the scale of the attack was much more limited than initially suspected, and we can confirm that only 4pc of TalkTalk customers have any sensitive personal data at risk”.
Phone, TV and internet provider TalkTalk pledged to deliver a better second half profits performance after reporting first half losses today.
In the six months to 30 September 2015, TalkTalk posted sales of £912m, up from £871m a year ago.
On 21 October, hackers attacked TalkTalk’s website, stealing confidential customer data.
Around four percent of users, or 157,000 customers, had personal details sotlen, including 16,500 account details and 20,000 card details.
To help mitigate the effect of the attack, Talktalk is offering customers a free upgrade, which it hopes will convince customers to stay with the group. The costs are part of TalkTalk’s bid to instil confidence in the business, which has been hacked three times in the last 12 months.
While it expects a few customers to leave, it’s confident it was on track to deliver full-year results on line with market expectations.
The group has also created a new bundle of online and telephone security features to boost customer protection. But it will not allow anyone who is nervous about their data being stored by TalkTalk following the attack to end their contract free of charge.
Advertisement
Harding added: “We have a robust plan to deliver a significant step-up in profits in H2, underpinned by the benefits of our transformation programme coming through strongly”.
