The company has provided “complimentary credit monitoring and identity protection services for 24 months.” In case fraud occurs because of a data breach, affected individuals can claim up to $1 million in reimbursement for stolen funds and expenses, Verizon told the Office of the Maine Attorney General. Verizon hadn’t responded to the questionnaire shared with them till the time of publishing this story.
Growing security incidents at telcos
Over the last few years, Verizon has been at the receiving end of security-related issues. In January 2023, the data of Verizon’s 7.5 million wireless customers was available on Dark Web. In addition, the personal information, including names, email addresses, and corporate ID numbers, of Verizon’s employees was compromised in a data breach incident in 2022.
“The frequency of such breaches, even at organizations equipped with the most sophisticated data-privacy-and-security mechanisms, is a pointer to the lacunas that continue to exist in the defense fabrics being employed,” said Deepak Kumar, the founder analyst and chief research officer at BMNxt Business and Market Advisory.
“This particular incidence, in which, as Verizon has indicated, no rogue actor was involved, nevertheless shows that there is a lack of coherence between the policies, people, and the processes in action. It also shows that while we continue to discuss a lot about models such as zero-trust data security, there obviously are ways to transgress such models,” added Kumar.
As per Verizon’s 2023 Data Breach Investigations Report, 74% of the breaches involved human elements, which may include social engineering attacks, errors, or misuse. The telecom service providers are a regular target of threat actors because it has vast amounts of sensitive and personal data of the consumers. Last year, T-Mobile experienced incidents of data breaches.
