John Ribeiro reports that Citigroup has updated its initial statement about its breach. Their updated statement is likely to fuel debate about time frames for disclosing breaches.
It now seems that over 360,083 credit card accounts in North America were accessed by the hacker(s) during the compromise of its card account management website in May. Some of those accounts, however, were duplicates or already-closed accounts, resulting in the bank having to reissue a total of 217,657 cards along with a notification letter.
Citigroup has been criticized for delaying in communicating to customers that their personal data had been compromised. The details released on Wednesday confirm that Citibank issued notification letters to customers on June 3, over 20 days after it detected a data breach.
[…]
The majority of accounts impacted were identified within seven days of discovery. By May 24, the bank confirmed the full extent of information accessed on 360,069 accounts. An additional 14 accounts were confirmed subsequently. To determine the cardholder impact required analysis of millions of pieces of data, Citigroup said.
Read more on Computerworld.
Citigroup joins the ranks of those who are having to defend what the public seems to see as significant or unacceptable delays in revealing breaches. The bank says it discovered the breach on May 10 (but when did it occur?) and immediately rectified it. They say that by May 24, they had confirmed the full extent of information accessed. Under the provisions of a bill proposed by Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack, they would have had to reveal the breach to authorities by two days after they had secured the breach. They would also have to notify customers by 48 hours after they had secured the breach.
As it was, the bank started sending out letters on June 3 but did not publicly acknowledge the breach to the media until June 9 after Financial Times contacted them and pushed for a response – almost a full month after discovery of the breach.
Update: Citi’s notification to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, dated June 9, includes a copy of the text of its notification letter to customers.