Data breach at Dixons Carphone sees 1.2 million personal data records accessed

Dixons Carphone Plc has said they have suffered a large-scale data breach which has seen unauthorised access gained to 1.2 million personal data records.

The company which owns the Carphone Warehouse and Currys PC World brands said that as part of a review of its systems and data, it has determined that there has been unauthorised access to certain data held by the company.

“We promptly launched an investigation, engaged leading cyber security experts and added extra security measures to our systems. We have taken action to close off this access and have no evidence it is continuing.

We have no evidence to date of any fraudulent use of the data as result of these incidents. We have also informed the relevant authorities including the ICO, FCA and the police.” A company spokesperson has said.

The company says investigations are ongoing which currently indicate that there was an attempt to compromise 5.9 million cards in one of the processing systems of Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores. “However, 5.8m of these cards have chip and pin protection.”

“The data accessed in respect of these cards contains neither pin codes, card verification values (CVV) nor any authentication data enabling cardholder identification or a purchase to be made.

Approximately 105,000 non-EU issued payment cards which do not have chip and pin protection have been compromised.

As a precaution, we immediately notified the relevant card companies via our payment provider about all these cards so that they could take the appropriate measures to protect customers.

We have no evidence of any fraud on these cards as a result of this incident.” Thespokesperson said.

Separately, an investigation found that 1.2m records containing non-financial personal data, such as name, address or email address, have been accessed.

“We have no evidence that this information has left our systems or has resulted in any fraud at this stage.

We are contacting those whose non-financial personal data was accessed to inform them, to apologise, and to give them advice on any protective steps they should take.”

Dixons Carphone Chief Executive, Alex Baldock, said:

‘We are extremely disappointed and sorry for any upset this may cause. The protection of our data has to be at the heart of our business, and we’ve fallen short here.

We’ve taken action to close off this unauthorised access and though we have currently no evidence of fraud as a result of these incidents, we are taking this extremely seriously.

We are determined to put this right and are taking steps to do so; we promptly launched an investigation, engaged leading cybersecurity experts, added extra security measures to our systems and will be communicating directly with those affected. Cyber crime is a continual battle for business today and we are determined to tackle this fast-changing challenge.’