ALTA suffered from a data breach that compromises many company records

The American Land Title Association (ALTA) has suffered from a data breach that compromises many company records in one phishing campaign. American Land Title Association or ALTA is the national trade association of U.S. representing approximately 6000 title insurance companies, independent abstracters, real estate attorneys, title and settlement agents, and title searchers.

As per an alert that was posted on their website, the ALTA said that they were told about a breach revealing non-public personal information within title and settlement industry. The ALTA said their Information Technology (IT) department has been examining the information that was provided by an individual, who claims being an ethical hacker.

In its alert, ALTA said that "a person claiming to be an ethical hacker contacted ALTA via Twitter and provided files that contain approximately 600 data entries consisting of domain identification, IP addresses, usernames and passwords". The files that were received from the hacker also contain information about the non-title companies.

The national trade association of U.S. (i.e. ALTA) said that "there is no indication the data comes from a specific system breach. There are no signs that the credentials are still active or how they were obtained. We believe this person is also contacting individuals and companies they can identify from the data".

The ALTA is recommending the possibly impacted companies to keep monitoring their systems for any kind of unauthorized access, and immediately alert their Information Technology departments just in case they found any suspicious access. The national trade association of U.S. is also recommending to report about suspicious emails to Internet Crime Complaint Center of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation).

Moreover, the ALTA has been planning implementing an information security program as well as response plan, so as to protect the data and systems of companies from leaks and data theft.

The ALTA also suggested a few steps to protect the company systems that include scanning all systems as well as devices for malware; requiring the company staff to change and update the system passwords, particularly those containing banking services and customer information; and patching or updating the installed software as well as operating systems.

» SPAMfighter News - 8/1/2019