Corporate responsibility.  That is what everyone on the business channels seems to trumpet right now.  And in some cases this is exactly the response that tarnished companies are taking. However, as a consumer it might be better if the companies took proactive approaches and stopped damage from taking place to their customers and company image.  For Dominion Enterprises and their InterActive Financial Marketing Group, this all comes as good ideas a little too late.  It was announced today that a data breach took place at the company on one of its secure servers between November 2007 and February 2008.  There has been no word released yet on why it took so long for the company to alert the public or when they first discovered that the breach had taken place.

Roughly 92,000 people have been affected by the hacking of the server.  While the number of individuals is troubling, what is more problematic is the information that was taken from the server.  This material included names, dates of birth, addresses, social security numbers, and credit card numbers.  In a world where personal data sells for $15-$20 in internet chat rooms, this is a gold mine for identity thieves.  There has been no word yet on how the hackers were able to infiltrate the security measures that were supposed to be in place on the server.  In response to the breach, Dominion has brought in industry leading security experts to review all the company’s network policies and to provide a complete overhaul to the system so that the financial transactions of the company are not at risk in the future.

In letters that are being sent out to all affected people, the company is apologizing profusely.  It is also providing a year’s worth of free credit monitoring.  This type of monitoring comes from companies like Lifelock.  This company maintains contacts with all three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian.  Whenever a new application for a credit card or loan is submitted, Lifelock holds the application from being processed until it can check with its client about the validity of the claim.  If the name of the person on the paperwork did not file it, then it is clearly a case of identity theft and it is prevented from being processed.  With this whole procedure ID thieves are thwarted before they can ruin the lives of innocent people.

Dominion has stated that it has already contacted local and federal law enforcement officials.  They plan to conduct a thorough investigation of the breach to see whether or not the hackers had any inside help that would have allowed them to get through the security features which had been in place.  No more details about the investigation were available since the case is ongoing.  Dominion wants to assure the public that it is safe to invest with the InterActive Financial Marketing Group in the future because a breach of this nature will never happen again.  Time will tell how this plea to the public works out.

Tags: Dominion, Equifax, Experian, lifelock

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Corporate Breaches, Individuals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.