If you ever went to our neighbour country, regardless for whatever purpose, you shall notice that your phone’s connection should be roaming to this telco company. As you take a stroll around the city of Singapore itself, you should see the main building for this company too. Yes, we are talking about Singtel.

The telco company caused a stir among Singaporeans when it was confirmed that the personal details of 129,000 customers, as well as financial information of its former employees, have been compromised in a security breach that involved a third-party file-sharing system. The incident also leaked the credit card details of the staff of a corporate client and information tied to 23 enterprises, including suppliers and partners.

Not so long ago, Singtel has claimed that they were investigating the impact of a cybersecurity breach that may have compromised customer data, after it ascertained on February 9 that “files were taken”. The attack had affected a file sharing system developed two decades ago by a third-party vendor Accellion, which the company had used internally and with external stakeholders.

After the investigation, the telco said compromised personal data belonging to 129,000 customers contained their identification number alongside some other data that included name, date of birth, mobile number, and physical address.

Sounds scary, wasn’t it?

The details of bank account for 28 former Singtel staff and credit card details of 45 employees of a corporate client with Singtel mobile lines were also leaked. These also includes information from 23 enterprises including suppliers, partners, and corporate clients were compromised.

For security reasons, Singtel won’t disclose any further details. According to the company, the leaked data compromised non-sensitive internal information like data logs, test data, reports and email messages.

It has begun alerting the affected persons and enterprises regarding the breach and was offering aid to mitigate the risk from the breach. Those include provisions for a data service provider to provide identity monitoring services, at no additional cost to affected customers, which would be instructed on how to sign up for the service.

“Given the complexity and sensitivity of our investigations, we are being as transparent as possible and providing information that is accurate to the best of our knowledge, ” said The CEO of Singtel, Yuen Kuan Moon. He also agreed that Singtel’s core operations and functions were unaffected and it was conducting a “thorough review” of its systems and processes.

Regardless of the importance of the data, a breach of confidentiality is something hard to be tolerated. Singtel really should take care of this issue so that such issues won’t arise again in the future. It is bad as it is for the customers as well for the company.