Week 4 - Nissan Canada Notifies Customers of a Data Breach During the Holidays

This holiday season, Nissan Canada Finance and Infiniti Financial Services Canada were not so lucky and reported a data breach on December 21st. The automaker is not sure how many customers were affected by the breach and notified all 1.13 million of them by email or letter. Nissan found out about the attack on December 11th which included the loss of information such as customer’s name, address, vehicle model, vehicle identification number, credit score, loan amount, and monthly payment. It seems that no payment or contact information (email address, phone number) were taken (Spring, 2017). Nissan is working with law enforcement, security analysts, and Canadian privacy regulators to find out the cause of the breach and who was affected. This incident was not the first time that Nissan has come under attack by hackers. Their websites were attacked in 2016 and malware was detected on their infrastructure network in 2002.

It’s alarming that so much information could be taken from customers of Nissan. The automaker had previous encounters with hackers and should bolster their security technology and teams. Performing vulnerability scans and addressing issues could make systems more resilience to hackers. Also, perhaps, the data could be separated into different systems, so a compromise of one system will not impact the others.

As we head to 2018, it seems that personal information is all over the dark web. There have been a countless number of data breaches, and it has affected all industries. It seems to be one of the risks of doing online business. Nissan has offered Transunion, a fraud monitoring tool for one year to all their customers. If you are affected, please take advantage of the service and be aware of suspicious activities.

References

Kovacs, E. (2017, Dec 22). Nissan Canada Informs 1.1 Million Customers of Data Breach. Retrieved from http://www.securityweek.com/nissan-canada-informs-11-million-customers-data-breach

Nissan. (2017, Dec 21). Nissan Canada Finance informs customers of possible data breach. Retrieved from http://nissannews.com/en-CA/nissan/canada/releases/nissan-canada-finance-informs-customers-of-possible-data-breach

Spring, T. (2017, Dec 22). Nissan Canada Finance Notifies 1.1 Million of Data Breach. Retrieved from https://threatpost.com/nissan-canada-finance-notifies-1-1-million-of-data-breach/129233/