'Your funds are safe with us': SBI's message to customers after major data breach

SBI informs customers affected by data breach, says account balances and funds are safe

NEW DELHI: State Bank of India (SBI) has informed customers whose data was identified in a recent breach, saying their account balances and funds remain safe."Further to our earlier post regarding the recent cyber incident, the Bank has individually informed all customers whose data was identified as being involved through email and/or WhatsApp.

We reiterate that your account balances and funds are safe with us," the bank said in a statement on Friday.

The update comes a day after SBI confirmed that a preliminary analysis had identified 3,897 customer records containing personal information among around 3.75 lakh records found on the dark web.The bank said it had activated its cyber incident response protocols and appointed an independent cybersecurity agency to investigate the incident after receiving alerts from its threat intelligence service provider, the Defence Cyber Agency and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) on October 16.The records identified in the preliminary analysis reportedly contained customers’ names, registered mobile numbers, dates of birth, gender, email addresses, residential addresses, branch details, customer information file (CIF) identifiers, lead IDs and metadata associated with loan and lead records.The disclosure followed a claim by cybersecurity monitoring account CyberPulse that a threat actor using the name Siriusim had leaked documents and personal data allegedly linked to SBI.

The post claimed the dataset contained 3.75 lakh rows in CSV files and 2,722 PDF documents, including customer information, loan applications, supporting documents, account-opening forms and addresses.SBI has said a detailed investigation is required to establish the authenticity and completeness of the exposed data, determine its source and extent, and assess the potential risks to customers and the bank.The bank has engaged a cybersecurity agency empanelled by CERT-In to conduct an independent assessment. It has also said the incident had no material impact on its core business operations, financial performance or business continuity, adding that its core functions continued to operate normally.The investigation is underway, with remedial and preventive measures being implemented.