HONG KONG-BASED airline Cathay Pacific Airways warned its passengers of any suspicious activity on their credit cards and other online accounts after the firm found a data breach on 9.4 million of its passengers.
Connie Cimafranca, Cathay Pacific marketing and communications supervisor in Cebu, said they already sent emails to passengers whose data were affected.
“Any passengers that we know have been affected will be emailed directly by us. They will be given instructions on who to contact and what to do,” she told SunStar Cebu.
The official email should come from infosecurity@cathaypacific.com and any passenger can call its toll-free hotline number 1800-1320-0179 or visit the dedicated website infosecurity.cathaypacific.com if they have any concerns regarding their data.
“If any passenger thinks that their data may have been compromised and they weren’t contacted, they can call the hotline number,” she said.
On Wednesday, the airline company announced that they discovered unauthorized access to its information system.
The data accessed included passenger name, nationality, birth date, phone number, email address, passport number, identity card number, frequent flyer program membership number, customer service remarks and historical travel information.
“There’s no evidence that any personal information has been misused. But if you have doubts that your credit card is being used and all that, they can call the number,” she said.
Cimafranca also urged their passengers to change their passwords.
“Affected or not, it’s really best to change their passwords regularly and check for suspicious activity, especially their credit cards. And also not to reply to any email that looks like it’s from Cathay but it actually isn’t, that is mostly used for phishing,” she said.
“If the contents of the email asks for passwords and any sensitive information then that’s surely not from Cathay,” Cimafranca added.
Cathay Pacific chief executive officer Rupert Hogg, in a statement, assured that they are investigating the incident.
“We are very sorry for any concern this data security event may cause our passengers. We acted immediately to contain the event, commence a thorough investigation with the assistance of a leading cybersecurity firm, and to further strengthen our IT security measures,” he said.
Cathay Pacific Airways has twelve flights a week from Cebu to Hong Kong and from Hong Kong to various destinations in the world.