There has been a sustained attack on the TalkTalk website that might have led to hackers accessing details of the firm's four million customers.
The breach is just one of three big cyber-attacks that TalkTalk has suffered in the last year. With TalkTalk being a very large company it is constantly bombarded with cyber-attacks all day, every day.
It looks like the first hack was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) that tried to knock over TalkTalk's servers by hitting them with lots of data. This is where hackers flood a company’s site with internet traffic in an effort to overload digital systems and take them offline.
Roland Dobbins from Arbor Networks, a company that helps firms block the massive data flows, stated that there are hundreds if not thousands of these kinds of attacks every day.
The DDoS assault on TalkTalk seems to have been followed by another attack which sought to get at its customer database. From knowing this the company has warned that personal information may have been accessed which includes: names, addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and credit card/bank details could have been accessed in an unencrypted form.
Companies are as vulnerable as their defences to cyber attacks and these intrusions are becoming increasingly regular. This is why it is essential for companies to keep protected and look into cyber security.
If you are a TalkTalk customer and want to stay protected there are ways in which you can do so. These are very simple but can stop hackers from accessing any personal information. First thing to be aware of is scam calls and emails claiming to be from TalkTalk especially if they are asking for personal information. Monitoring your bank account can also help you spot any problems if there are any payments you do not recognise. A final thing you should keep in mind is to never reuse your password on multiple website as hackers could have accessed usernames, emails and passwords.
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