Bank of Montreal(BMO), known to be Canada’s fourth largest financial service corporation said on Monday that it was hit by a cyber attack in which some hackers got hold of personal information of some of the BMO customers and were trying to blackmail the higher authorities of the financial institution to mint money.
Cybersecurity Insiders learned that info of more than 50,000 accounts out of 8 million customers across Canada is now lying in the hands of the hackers. A source reporting to our web resource also reported that data related to more than 40K accounts of customers related to Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is also lying with the cyber crooks.
The above-stated information is however yet to be confirmed with the authorities.
Meanwhile, an official statement released just a few minutes ago says that the cyber crooks could have got hold of the data from third parties operating outside the country and assured that the exposure could have been related to the accounts closed back in 2015.
However, the bank authorities confirmed that they were working with relevant authorities to investigate the incident.
Canada’s 4th biggest lender said that it was busy contact the affected customers and is requesting all its customers to monitor their accounts and notify BMO about any suspicious transactions taking place in the next 6 to 12 months time.
After the disclosure of the cyber incident, trade analysts observed that the shares of BMO were down by 0.4 percent at 10:50 am EDT.
More details about the attack will be updated shortly.
Meanwhile, readers of Cybersecurity Insiders are requested to make a note of a fact over here that any company, irrespective of its operating business vertical, will witness a dip in its market shares as soon as it reports a cybersecurity incident.
Yahoo, Equifax, Facebook( after Cambridge Analytica political data scandal), All WannaCry and NotPetya Ransomware attack victims are few companies to specify for instance.
Thus, it has been observed that a single cyber attack can break a business within no time.
So, you better keep your business safe from all such attacks by following efficient cybersecurity strategies in your business environments.
