Nissan Data Breach Exposes Thousands of Customers After Red Hat Security Incident

[johny899]

You read something in the news that makes you go, "Wait! What happened?!" An example of this is the recent report of a data breach at Red Hat, a software company that Nissan uses to manage their customer data. If you own a Nissan vehicle or have ever dealt with Nissan, this will be very important to you.

What Happened?​

To put it simply: Nissan has stated that approximately 21,000 customers had their private information compromised due to a breach. This issue did not begin with Nissan; it began with Red Hat.

Although this breach occurred at a dealership in Japan, it has implications for the entire company, as customers tend to lose trust when there are breaches of security regarding their personal information.

What Information Was Exposed?​

So what was the actual leaked information? The information that was exposed was:

• Customer Names
• Addresses
• Phone Numbers
• Email Addresses
• Sales and Service Records

There is good news, however: no credit card numbers or bank accounts were impacted by this data breach.

How Did Hackers Obtain the Data?​

Hackers compromised the internal systems of Red Hat and accessed data that was stored in those systems. Included in that data were records of Nissan's customers, which Nissan learned of later and provided notification to their affected customers.

This brings up a point about sharing information with third-party vendors and what level of caution should companies take? The answer seems pretty straightforward.

What This Means​

While the criminals did not obtain any credit card Information, personal information has value to criminals. Emails and Phone Numbers lead to Spam, Scams and Phishing Attacks; nobody wants this.