Any customer with an existing Scottrade account before February of 2014 may have had their contact information and Social Security numbers taken.
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Scottrade said on its website that its trading platforms and client funds had not been compromised.
It’s the second major breach to be reported in the U.S. this week – only yesterday, credit application processing firm Experian noted that 15 million T-Mobile customers’ details were stolen from its systems.
Scottrade said it had locked down the hackers’ entry point and strengthened its network defenses.
The online brokerage found out about the breach when federal law enforcement officials informed it of an ongoing investigation into cybersecurity issues at financial services companies, Scottrade said in a statement. The FAQ noted that all client passwords remained encrypted at all times.
Scottrade believes client names and addresses were the target of the hack. It will directly notify these customers of the attack.
The approximately 4.6 million clients whose information was stored in the database are eligible for identity protection services paid for by Scottrade, the company said.
“We take the security of the information entrusted to us very…”
When an organization gets hacked, ideally they’ll realize it promptly and warn their users right away.
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Incidentally, October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month in the U.S. And now at least 20 million people have had their awareness raised. These highlight the challenges that companies are now experiencing as they try to protect their systems from more sophisticated hacking attacks that have occurred in recent years.
