Trend Micro, a major player in antivirus software game, has released a regarding ex-employee who accessed customer data and sold the data to phone scammers. The scammers use the data to call the firms customers under the guise of being support agents for the antivirus firm
In an apology post the firm said:
“Our open investigation has confirmed that this was not an external hack, but rather the work of a malicious internal source that engaged in a premeditated infiltration scheme to bypass our sophisticated controls,”
“A Trend Micro employee used fraudulent means to gain access to a customer support database that contained names, email addresses, Trend Micro support ticket numbers, and in some instances telephone numbers. There are no indications that any other information such as financial or credit payment information was involved, or that any data from our business or government customers was improperly accessed,”
“We hold ourselves to a higher level of accountability and sincerely apologize to all impacted customers for this situation. Based on the current status of our investigation, we believe that all of the consumers who were potentially affected have already received individual notices from Trend Micro, but we will continue to investigate and provide further notices in the event that any further affected customers are identified,”
The company claims to have 12 million consumer customers. Out of those, 68,000 were affected by this breach.
Trend Micro wants to remind customers it never calls customers unexpectedly. Official contact information for Trend Micro technical support in your region can always be found at https://esupport.trendmicro.com.
