Bookings Details of British Airways Passengers got Compromised

Hackers stole bookings details of almost 380,000 passengers of British Airways (BA), leading to huge chaos. Though, the cyber attacks have been dealt with lightly by many major companies earlier, this case seems to be one of the worst in the recent times, when it comes to taking an action by the airlines.

One of the main reasons for this can be attributed to the fact that now all cyber attacks are required, by European Union, to be reported by the companies within a time span of 72 hours, and the companies are asked to withheld the information till the criminal investigation is on. The companies, who violate it, can face a punishment which is 4% of their annual sales. In the case of British Airways, the penalty amount can be around 489 million pounds, if we go by the figures of 2017.

It seemed that the hack lasted for over two weeks, thus affecting the bookings in between August 21 to September 5. This signifies that all the customers of British Airways are not affected by this hack, but only those who booked their tickets during the period when the airlines data was hacked are at risk. However, it is still not clear who are the people negatively affected by the attack, and whether there will be any money loss for them due to the hack, as posted on September 10, 2018, in theconversation.com.

Analysts of RBC Capital Markets said that though IAG and BA are most probably liable for the losses caused by the hack, they probably have insurance covers to deal with such expenses. They further said that still the hacking has risked the airlines reputation, as BA has experienced other IT failures too.

Managing Director of crisis management consultancy who focuses on aviation, Return on Development, Jerry Allen, said that British Airways was prompt with their response by sending emails and offering compensations. Allen also stated that the emails were signed by Alex Cruz, their Chief Executive. He further added that "ultimately in all my experience of aviation crises, people will largely excuse the incident -- what they will not excuse under any circumstances is a poor response."

An advisory issued by the BA says that the customers will be "reimbursed for any fraudulent activity on their accounts as a direct result of the data theft".

BA has advised the affected customers for cancelling their cards as a precaution. Many customers already have reported about fraudulent attack on their cards.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/17/2018