Insurers Yet Unscathed After Massive Data Breach

Alliance Data Systems Corp.'s Epsilon, a marketing services company, notified its customers of a significant data breach last Friday that reports say is potentially the largest in U.S. history.

As of this writing, it appears as though no insurers were affected; however, the names and e-mail addresses belonging to many large U.S. banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Capital One Financial Corp., as well as College Board students—which represents nearly 6,000 universities—and a host of other companies were compromised when a hacker broke into Epsilon's clients' customer files.

Epsilon says that only e-mail addresses and customer names were obtained, and that no personal information, including credit cards or social security numbers, was exposed. However, many of the banks affected warned that this information could be used in phishing attacks.

The company issued a statement on its website stating that, "A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk," and that a full investigation of the matter is currently underway.

When contacted regarding the status of whether or not insurers were affected in the breach, Epsilon told INN that they're still investigating the matter and would release no further information at this time.

Information from American Banker was used as part of this report. 

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