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- Shares of Capital One slipped 5% in early trading on Tuesday after the credit card issuer disclosed a data breach on Monday impacting more than 100 million people.
- The company said the hack mostly revealed personal information, such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and self-reported income of customers from between 2005 and early 2019.
- The data was stored on an Amazon Web Services cloud server, and the hacker was a former AWS employee.
- Watch Capital One trade live.
Capital One, one of the largest credit card issuers in the US, revealed a data breach affecting tens of millions of customers across the US and Canada, sending shares sliding by 5% in early trading on Tuesday.
The hack affected about 100 million people in the US, and around 6 million individuals in Canada, according to a statement published by the company on Monday.
Some analysts on Wall Street surmised that the issue could result in higher expenses and reputational damage for Capital One, which likely contributed to the stock decline.
Most of the data that was leaked was personal information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and self-reported income on consumers and small businesses from 2005 through early 2019. The information was collected when they applied for one of Capital One’s credit card products.
The hacker also accessed credit status data, including credit scores, balances, payment history, and some transaction information. About 140,00 Social Security numbers of Capital One credit card customers were also comprised, and around 80,000 linked bank account numbers.
Wall Street analysts have already begun to speculate as to what the fallout of the hack will be for not only Capital One, but the broader information security industry as well.
"As one of the largest-ever data breaches and on the back of GDPR, we believe this event could bring additional focus/attention/spending to the security landscape," Matthew Hedberg, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said in a research note to clients on Tuesday.
He continued: "Capital One has invested heavily with AWS and security over the years and we wonder, if they are subject to a breach of this magnitude, how other companies that aren’t as dedicated to securing their cloud-based infrastructure may fare."
The information that was accessed was stored on an Amazon Web Services cloud server, and the hacker was a former cloud service employee at Amazon.
Capital One is up 22% year-to-date.
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Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Daniel Strauss)