UK banks battle to deal with British Airways data breach
In the wake of the British Airways (BA) data breach, UK banks have flown into action to deal with potential banking and payments issues.
BA says customer data was stolen from its website and mobile app. About 380,000 transactions were affected. The stolen data did not include travel or passport details.
Customers’ bookings between 22:58 BST 21 August 2018 and 21:45 BST 5 September 2018 were affected in terms of banking and payment details.
BA explains that it continues to investigate with the police and cyber specialists, and has reported the data theft to the Information Commissioner.
With such a cyberattack happening, banks were keen to reassure customers and stop problems.
No need to list them all, but UK challenger Starling tweets: “Following the @British_Airways data breach announcement we have ordered replacement debit cards for all customers who spent money with BA from 21st August to 5th September. Affected customers will receive a message by email.”
Fellow challenger bank Revolut also tweets: “Following recent @British_Airways data breach announcement, we’ve established that a small number of users may have been affected. We’ll be contacting those users directly and offering them a free replacement card.”
NatWest could probably learn from those two, as it just tweets: “We’re aware British Airways suffered a data breach between 21/08 & 5/09 which included data for some of our customers. We maintain high levels of security to ensure customer accounts remain safe & secure. You can use Online/Mobile Banking to monitor your account.”
It then linked to a page which takes customers to a service status page.
