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Tesco’s online bank has been targeted by cyber criminals. 20,000 customers were saw money stolen from their accounts.
Tesco Bank has moved quickly to investigate the situation and has told customers to only withdraw money from cash machines. It has also told customers to not transfer money between accounts.
The bank’s chief executive Benny Higgins reassured customers in comments to BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “Any financial loss that results from this fraudulent activity will be borne by the bank. Customers are not at financial risk.
“It would be relatively small amounts that have came out, but we’re still working on that. We are now in dialogue with the National Crime Agency. We are working closely them. We are also in close contact with the Financial Conduct Authority, we invest very heavily in insuring we have preventative measures in respect of this kind of fraudulent activity, but in the modern world it’s impossible to be totally secure.”
Giving his opinion on the events, Adrian Davis of security non-profit (ISC)², said: “I would like to think that the Tesco hack, where 20,000 customers saw their bank accounts robbed, represents a tipping point for cyber security becoming a business priority.”
“We are more than a year after TalkTalk dominated headlines in the UK for losing their customer records, and we continue to see at least half a dozen headlines a week about new cyber security breaches. Today’s disappointing news comes from the financial sector, generally known to be leaders in this field. Clearly the business world has yet to treat the risks as seriously as they must. I believe we are actually at a point where despite growing awareness of the issues, business leaders are losing control and visibility of core business risk,” Davis added.
