Luxury bin maker Brabantia has admitted to suffering a security breach last week which may have exposed the personal details of an unspecified number of customers.
The Dutch firm’s CEO, Tijn van Elderen, claimed in a statement that “routine monitoring” had led to the discovery of the unauthorized intrusion into its database accounts.
He continued:
“We have already notified all our consumers to assure them that no financial or password information was compromised, the risk for individual consumers is low.
Brabantia does not receive or store banking numbers, credit card numbers or other financial data. All our payments are handled by an external company that is completely separated from our own systems.”
The firm added that it has reset all account passwords as a precaution, so any returning customers will be prompted to choose a new credential to regain access.
“It goes without saying that we have immediately taken measures to prevent this issue from happening again and we are currently scrutinizing and evaluating all our security policies and procedures,” van Elderen continued.
“If there is anything we can do to further tighten security, it will be done immediately.”
Charles Sweeney, CEO of web security firm Bloxx, welcomed Brabantia’s swift response to the potential compromise, and claimed that in resetting their passwords customers may also think about changing their credentials for other sites.
“Passwords really are the Achilles’ heel of online security – people know they shouldn't reuse them across all their accounts, yet they do because they perceive the risk as being very low,” he told Infosecurity.
“The fact is that whilst Brabantia might not hold confidential information, a hacker can use the personal details gleaned as a means to create a much more chaotic end on other sites where a person has an account and their financial data is stored. Good password hygiene is essential to protecting your digital ID."