Liberty Holdings’ CEO said its customers have not suffered any financial losses so far after the company was hit with a cyberattack over the weekend.
“To be clear, at this stage there is no evidence that any of our customers have suffered any financial loss. We will proactively inform our customers individually if and when we discover that they may have been impacted,” CEO David Munro said in a press briefing, according to Reuters.
On Sunday (June 17), the South African-based company, which offers asset management, investment, insurance and health products to 3.2 million people across Africa, announced that an external party had contacted Liberty claiming to have accessed data from the firm and demanded payment.
Liberty was in contact with the cybercriminals to determine their intention, but have not made any concessions “in the face of this attempted extortion,” Munro said.
The company quickly opened an investigation into the incident, and as a result was able to identify and address specific vulnerabilities in its IT infrastructure to secure customer data. The company has alerted the authorities, and will also keep shareholders informed as new information comes to light.
“Liberty is at an advanced stage of investigating the extent of the data breach, which at this stage it seems to be largely emails and possibly attachments,” added Munro.
At this time, the CEO said that no further action was required from Liberty’s customers, who will be contacted by the company if they may have been impacted.
But Business Day cited sources with intimate knowledge of the situation who said that the breach happened on Saturday, with hackers gaining access to sensitive data about some of the insurer’s top clients.
“Liberty IT personnel are running around like headless chickens trying to figure out how much data was accessed, and they can’t explain to their bosses how they were hacked,” a source said.
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