UniCredit Bank Suffers ‘Data Incident’ Exposing 3 Million Italian Customer Records

Officially founded in 1870, UniCredit is Italy’s biggest banking
and financial services and one of the leading European commercial
banks with more than 8,500 branches across 17 countries.

What happened? — Though UniCredit did not disclose any
details on how the data incident happened, the bank did confirm
that an unknown attacker has compromised a file created in 2015
containing three million records relating only to its Italian
customers.

What type of information was compromised? — The leaked data
contains personal information of 3 million customers, including
their:

• Names
• Cities
• Telephone numbers
• Email addresses

What type of information was not compromised? — Unicredit
confirmed that the compromised user records did not include any
other personal data or bank details that would permit attackers
access to customer accounts or allow unauthorized transactions.

What is UniCredit now doing? — The company immediately
launched an internal investigation to investigate the incident and
verify the extent of the breach, as well as informed all the
relevant authorities, including law enforcement.

The company has also begun contacting all potentially affected
customers by online banking notifications and/or post.

Though the compromised data doesn’t include any banking or
financial data, it is always a good idea to be vigilant and keep a
close eye on your bank and payment card statements for any unusual
activity and report to the bank, if you find any.

This is not the first time when UniCredit has been a victim of
such a data security incident. In 2017, the bank disclosed two
similar data
breaches—one occurred between September and October 2016 and
another between June and July 2017— that affected nearly 400,000
Italian customers.
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