Liberty Insurance of South Africa becomes Cyber Attack Victim

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South Africa based insurance company ‘Liberty’ has made it official that it became a victim of the cyber attack on Sunday. But the company’s CEO David Munro has assured that none of his firm’s customers have witnessed financial losses due to the possible ransomware attack.

As per the details available to Cybersecurity Insiders, hackers capsized a database of ‘Liberty’ Insurance and started demanding millions of rands in return for not releasing confidential customer information.

Speaking to the press on Sunday evening in Johannesburg, Munro stated that a third party firm has been hired to investigate into the incident. He added that the prima facie of the investigation reveals that hackers had access to large emails and possible attachments- like medical reports and banking details.

The hacking is said to have affected core Liberty Insurance Business. However, the malware did not spread to Stanlib or to any of its businesses outside South Africa.

Officials are yet to confirm the exact date of occurrence in this incident. But many customers of Liberty started to receive emails and SMSes from the early hours of Sunday narrating the incident.
As soon as the customers started to panic, ‘Liberty’ issued a public statement on the attack. And in the evening the CEO admitted that few of the digital assets of the company were under the control of cyber crooks.

By the early hours of Monday, the company’s IT staff is said to have regained the control of their IT systems via a business continuity plan.

More details will be updated shortly!

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Naveen Goud is a writer at Cybersecurity Insiders covering topics such as Mergers & Acquisitions, Startups, Cyber Attacks, Cloud Security and Mobile Security

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