Dixons Carphone Suffers Massive Data Breach, 5.9 Million Payment Cards & 1.2 Million Personal Data Exposed

Dixons Carphone admits a massive data breach, according to their ongoing investigation report hackers attempted to compromise 5.9 million cards and 1.2 million personal data.

They have spotted an unauthorized access to certain data in processing systems and there is no evidence to date/time of the activity. The company has launched investigation engaging leading third part cybersecurity measures and improve the security posture of their systems.

Out of 5.9 million records compromised, 5.8m of them has chip and pin protection. It means the cards are protected with neither pin codes, card verification values (CVV) nor any authentication data enabling cardholder identification or a purchase to be made.

However, 105,000 non-EU issued payment cards which do not have chip and pin protection have been compromised.

With the companies separate investigation, they detected 1.2 million personal data such as name, address or email address, have been compromised. We have no evidence that this information has left our systems or has resulted in any fraud at this stage.

According to the company’s data breach statement published “As a precaution, we immediately notified the relevant card companies via our payment provider about all these cards so that they could take the appropriate measures to protect customers. We have no evidence of any fraud on these cards as a result of this incident.”

Dixons Carphone Chief Executive, Alex Baldock, said, “We are extremely disappointed and sorry for any upset this may cause. The protection of our data has to be at the heart of our business, and we’ve fallen short here. we promptly launched an investigation, engaged leading cybersecurity experts, added extra security measures to our systems.”

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applied on 25 May 2018, according to GDPR Data breaches must be reported to the data protection authority within 72 hours of discovery. Individuals impacted should be told where there exists a high risk to their rights and freedoms, e.g. identity theft, personal safety.

Personal data needs to be secured against unauthorized processing and against accidental loss, destruction or damage. You will need to track the types of data you hold and document when you would be required to notify the ICO.

If you fail to report a breach, even by accident, you’ll be hit with a fine – 2 percent of global turnover or $11 million, whichever is higher. This is in addition to the fine you’ll pay for the breach itself. Yahoo was fined $334k for 2014 data breach by UK watchdog.