ADT recently disclosed a cybersecurity breach through a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company, which services approximately 6 million customers as of June, reported that unauthorized actors accessed certain databases containing customer order information. Upon discovering the breach, ADT took immediate action to halt the unauthorized access and initiated an investigation with the assistance of third-party cybersecurity experts.
The breach resulted in the attackers obtaining limited customer information, including email addresses, phone numbers, and postal addresses. However, ADT has stated that there is no evidence to suggest that customers’ home security systems were compromised. Additionally, the company does not believe that the attackers accessed other sensitive information such as credit card data or banking information.
There is not a lot that users themselves could have done to prevent their information from being leaked in this incident since the breach was on ADT’s side. However, there are some stems that can be taken to prevent this from happening or from being worse than it has to be. These are:
- Evaluate your vendors for their security practices. We recommend looking for vendors with SOC 2 compliance or ISO 27001. This means that they have been audited for their security practices.
- Freeze your credit reports. Your credit should only be pulled when you know about it, freezing your credit reports makes it harder for bad actors with your information to open up credit cards in your name.
- Use unique passwords for all of your services. In this case, ADT doesn’t state if passwords were leaked or not. If passwords were leaked, and you reuse your password on multiple sites, then your other sites could be compromised too.
ADT is continuing its investigation and has notified the affected customers, who represent a small fraction of its customer base. The company believes that the cybersecurity incident has not significantly impacted its operations and does not expect it to affect its financial condition or 2024 financial guidance.
For more information, you can view the ADT SEC filing here.
