American Airlines' account holders and employees may want to check their account statements regularly from here on out.
The popular airline recently announced to a certain amount of account holders and employees that it was the victim of a cybersecurity attack in July and that it is doing all it can to prevent a similar incident in the future.
American Airlines' account holders and employees can avail of the company-recommended third-party assistance from Experian to assist them in monitoring credentials and account statements.
American Airlines Data Breach Details
American Airlines mentioned in its letter to affected account holders and employees that it discovered an unknown hacker had compromised the accounts of certain American Airlines team members to access their personal information.
According to Bleeping Computer's report on the matter, Andrea Koos, American Airlines' Sr. Manager for Corporate Communications, mentioned to the publication that hackers underwent a phishing campaign to compromise the accounts of their employees, though they didn't mention how the hackers did it.
Unfortunately, Koos didn't reveal the exact number of account holders and employees affected by the data breach. Instead, Koos only mentioned that a "limited/very small number" of employees and users had their accounts compromised.
The letter mentioned that the hacker was able to make off with users' and employees' names, dates of birth, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. The hacker also acquired details about their official IDs, such as driver's license numbers, passport numbers, and/or even certain medical information they provided.
Although American Airlines mentioned it was able to secure the affected email accounts as soon as it discovered the breach, it couldn't find any piece of evidence that users' and employees' personal data was misused.
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The company is already enforcing additional technical safeguards to prevent a similar incident from happening in the immediate future. To better protect users' and employees' accounts, it also provided a complimentary two-year membership of Experian's Identity Works, which, according to Experian's official website, provides its users with protection against Identity Theft and unauthorized access to their credit files.
However, American Airlines employees and account holders should keep in mind that Experian can only monitor their accounts within 48 hours of enrolment.
Russell Hubbard, American Airlines' Chief Privacy and Data Protection Officer, mentioned that the company regrets what happened while assuring users and employees that it takes the security of their personal information "very seriously."
American Airlines' Past Data Breaches
This data breach isn't the first one that American Airlines experienced.
The company was part of a group of companies that were affected by a data breach in 2021 caused by a misconfiguration of a setting in their Microsoft software, per CNN.
The misconfiguration resulted in the exposure of millions of people's personal information for months, per UpGuard.
Aside from American Airlines, Maryland's health department, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Ford Motor Co., and other companies and organizations were also affected by the breach.
Thankfully, American Airlines stated that their systems were secured and that the exposed personal data was not improperly accessed.
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