The firm only learned of the breach after federal law enforcement officials told them that they were investigating crimes that involved theft of information from financial services companies like Scottrade.
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Scottrade now has 3.1 million customers according to Leordeanu, but the breach exposed the personal data of about 4.6 million people who had accounts before February 2014. The company said it has taken “appropriate steps” to boost its network security after the incident.
The company said it believes that “the illegal activity involving our network occurred between late 2013 and early 2014, and targeted client names and street addresses”.
Word of the breach comes one day after Experiansaid 15 million T-Mobile customers had their information accessed by hackers.
Scottrade believes client names and addresses were the target of the hack. The company, however, assured that each client’s passwords have remained encrypted at all times. “We have not seen any indication of increased fraudulent activity as a result of this incident”.
The company is offering identity protection services to customers who were potentially affected. We’ll update this post if and when we get more information.
The online brokerage firm added that the known intrusion point had been secured, and an internal data forensics investigation on the incident had been conducted with the help of a leading computer security firm.
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October 2015 has been designated as National Cyber Security Awareness Month.
