Liberty hack the ‘biggest breach yet’
Liberty Life is the latest SA firm to have its data breached and has potentially exposed the personal details of millions
Millions of South Africans woke up on Sunday not to the afterglow of another stunning come-from-behind victory by the revitalised Springboks but to the news that their personal data may have been hacked — again. Liberty Life sent out text messages to its customers early on Sunday warning them that it had "been subjected to unauthorised access to its IT infrastructure, by an external party". That Liberty took two days to inform its customers of the breach suggests it doesn’t have a strong-enough focus on its IT systems — which might not have been secure enough, commentators say. "Nobody [at Liberty] takes IT seriously and then this is what happens," a senior IT executive with more than a decade of experience working with Standard Bank tells the FM on condition of anonymity. Liberty is 53.6%-owned by Standard Bank. Revelations of Liberty’s hack smacked its share price too. It fell 4.7% in the two days afterwards, wiping R1.68bn off the firm’s R34bn market value. Liberty Life CEO David...
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