TalkTalk Shares Costs Of Massive Payments Breach

Just months after British broadband provider TalkTalk suffered what has been regarded as one of Britain’s biggest online security breaches, the company has confirmed that the “significant and sustained” cyberattack caused it to lose up to 101,000 customers and cost it up to £60m (roughly $86.5 million).

Financial Times reported yesterday (Feb. 2), that nearly 95,000 of the 101,000 customers the telecommunications company said it lost were due to the cyberattack, which compromised the private payment and bank data of millions of accounts.

Back in October when the cyberattack took place, The Telegraph said that TalkTalk was being accused of disregarding security vulnerabilities and was investigating thousands of cases where its customers reported losing money as a result of the work of cybercriminals.

“[The] investigation is ongoing, but unfortunately, there is a chance that some of the following data has been compromised: names, addresses, date of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, TalkTalk account information, credit card details and/or bank details,” the company said in a statement on Oct. 22.

Despite the impacts of the high-profile data breach, which included a slowdown in revenue growth and its shares dropping by more than 30 percent, the company said it aimed to reduce the effect the attack had on customer satisfaction by providing free upgrades.

According to FT, TalkTalk expects its full-year results to fall “in line with market consensus.”

“It is encouraging to see the business returning to normal after a challenging quarter that was dominated by the cyberattack. Our customers have responded well, with almost half a million customers choosing to take up our unconditional offer of a free upgrade,” TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding said.

“Both churn and new connections recovered during December and January, and independent external research has revealed that customers believe that we acted in their best interest. In fact, trust in the TalkTalk brand has improved since just after the attack, and consideration is higher now than it was before the incident.”