Dixons Carphone has been investigating the breach since it was first discovered in June.

Due to the hack, personal information, names, addresses and email address may have been accessed.

According to their press release, the data breached does not contain payment card or bank account details and there is no evidence that any fraud has resulted.

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Dixons Carphone Chief Executive, Alex Baldock said: “Since our data security review uncovered last year’s breach, we’ve been working around the clock to put it right. That’s included closing off the unauthorised access, adding new security measures and launching an immediate investigation, which has allowed us to build a fuller understanding of the incident that we’re updating on today.”

“As a precaution, we’re now also contacting all our customers to apologise and advise on the steps they can take to protect themselves.”

“Again, we’re disappointed in having fallen short here and very sorry for any distress we’ve caused our customers. I want to assure them that we remain fully committed to making their personal data safe with us.”

>See also: Is your business ready to deal with a data breach?

Security Update

Following the breach, Dixons Carphone has said they have been putting further security measures in place to safeguard customer information. They have also increased their investment in cyber security and added additional controls.

Mark Adams, Regional VP, UK & Ireland at Veeam, said: “Breaches can happen to any business, but the fact it has taken so long for the seriousness of this particular breach to be realised is worrying. A business suffering such a breach will really need to take a look at their processes and systems. To get the scale of a breach so vastly wrong is a concern, especially when the first number of customers was already one of the most sizeable breaches of a UK business to date.”

>See also: Business leaders need to keep up with data breach headlines

“Being prepared for the absolute worst is the key to a successful response to a data breach. While it’s near impossible to prevent all data leakage and data theft, it is clear that a strong incident response process will significantly reduce the pain associated with data breach issues.”

“These days the public care a lot about how their data is handled and by whom, and they want organisations to be more proactive in managing that data, so the size of the breach is going to translate into a much higher loss than many will imagine. Customers will exit contracts, and with so much competition for business, this will be an expensive breach with a long tail of damage to the organisation’s brand and reputation.”

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