Credit: Latitude Financial Services
Latitude Financial Services has rejected demands from cyber attackers that stole over 14 million records to pay a ransom in order to delete the data in question.
In a statement released to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) on 11 April, Latitude said it “would not reward criminal behaviour, nor do we believe that paying a ransom will result in the return or destruction of the information that was stolen”.
The information in question includes 7.9 million driving licence numbers across Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ), with 3.2 million of these being provided in the last 10 years, according to an update in late March.
Approximately 6.1 million records going back to 2005 were also stolen, with 5.7 million of these provided before 2013.
Roughly 53,000 passport numbers and less than 100 monthly financial statements were also taken.
The financial services company also said that, based on its current analysis of the situation, there have been no further breaches since the initial announcement on 15 March.
Additionally, it also claimed there have been no indications that any other records were taken in the breach.
“Latitude will not pay a ransom to criminals,” said Latitude CEO Bob Belan. “Based on the evidence and advice, there is simply no guarantee that doing so would result in any customer data being destroyed and it would only encourage further extortion attempts on Australian and New Zealand businesses in the future.”
He also said the company’s priority is contacting affected customers and providing them with support.
Belan added that Latitude’s teams have been focused on restoring its IT systems, bringing staffing levels to full capacity, improving security and returning to normal operations.
According to the statement, Latitude’s primary customer contact centre is back online and operating at full capacity and new customer onboardings have restarted.
Latitude also added it has cyber security risk insurance and has notified its insurers about the incident.
