Unless you have been hibernating you would have read about TalkTalk and that it has been a victim of a Cyber attack for the 3rd Time.
Reports are already pouring in about money disappearing from people’s bank accounts, strange calls trying to obtain money and more.
If you want to learn more about the actual incident, click on the link to the BBC News at the end of this article.
Now for my thoughts on this situation and the potential outcome.
The facts are alarming on Cyber attacks. I don’t mean to scare you BUT over 50% of small businesses have suffered a Cyber attack last year. We all hear about the big name companies, but small companies are being targeted like never before. Why? Easy prey as their computer systems are not locked down enough. So with the stats so high for small companies, it comes as no surprise of complacency by even larger ones.
TalkTalk is going to need a lot of money to recover from this incident. Here’s why –
1) It will need to investigate how exactly the breach occurred, and for the third time and remove and crypto lock, virus, trojan or more.
2) It will have to investigate to see whether an employee was part of a crime that aided the hackers.
3) It will to allow for example £10 per customer in costs in contacting them and advising of the incident.
4) Remedies will need to be put in place (which will cost) to change and improve systems
5) PR and Marketing – costs for managing this will need to be allowed for
6) Brand – loss of brand reputation
The above are just a small example of problems TalkTalk are going to face. In reality, the brand is being destroyed. I personally believe this is not a maybe but a possibility and that TalkTalk may never survive this Cyber attack.
Source – BBC News – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34615226
Gavin's Gadgets & Photography 
You forgot to mention it just cost them £20 per user to give them free credit check alerts
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That’s a good point. I left it out as they wont be paying £20 per customer. The cost will be less but it’s still going to be a huge expense. There are also significant other costs too. But primarily the brand reputation is in tatters and if they can’t recover it, they are ruined imo. Not good really.
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As soon as their website is up im off to another ISP 🙂
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Don’t blame you. There is a lot more to this story I can’t print too.
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Can you not move beforehand.
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Customer details were not encrypted! I’m leaving as soon as my 12 months are up.
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Why wait Jah. This is so serious. Surely TT have a duty of care that they didn’t undertake. I have several people and friends who have had attempts to compromise their bank accounts already.
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I’m with TalkTalk for landline and broadband. Is there any point in moving? How do we know which other companies are more secure?
I’m asking because when I went to buy a new phone last week I was told my credit rating wasn’t good enough. So I did a free credit check and found that there was a bogus standing order on my account with a catalogue company. I phoned the company to ask them about this. They said that they realised something was wrong when whoever it was tried to open it. They then flagged it up as a bad credit. I asked why they hadn’t informed me. They said it was because there had been multiple attempts on different accounts and they couldn’t contact everyone. They left it for people to contact them even though they didn’t know anything about it!
Frustrating! I’m still down as a bad risk but they have promised to remove the negative rating. At least we didn’t lose any money so that’s something.
My point is that I don’t know where they got my details from. It might have been TalkTalk but this looks like it may have come from a local company as all the bogus attempts were using addresses in Wembley. We had just bought a sofa from DFS so it could be them? Probably best to close all bank accounts and keep money under the bed!
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Personally Graham none. Your data has been stolen. Several of my friends have been affected. However , I would move because they haven’t secured anything since first attack and I can assure you there is more hidden crap they’ve not told people about. It’s not a great position tbh either way.
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Gavin you’re right. Looking at Sky.
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Do you have a man on the inside Gavin? You don’t have to answer that!
Just looked at Sky news. Interestingly there’s an article about the Titanic a bit further down. An omen perhaps?
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