Cognizant Corporate Cards Targeted In Cyberattack

A cyberattack from Maze ransomware against global business and tech firm Cognizant mostly hit the company’s corporate cards that had been issued to employees, the company told authorities, according to The Times of India.

The attack was discovered April 20, and officials found that the as-yet-unknown assailants were able to take a “limited amount” of data from the company between April 9 and 11 this year, the report stated

The company said associates with active cards will be given credit and identity theft monitoring services, courtesy of privacy technology company ID Experts. Also, the FBI has been called to assist with finding out the perpetrator.

The impact of the attack is likely to be between $50 million and $70 million for the rest of the ongoing quarter, according to the report.

Becky Schmitt, the company’s chief people officer, said in a letter to employees and regulators that the company regrets the incident and has been taking it seriously, the report stated. She added that the company is continuing to monitor the account, but it has not detected any increase in fraud for the accounts.

The company has also taken the step of allowing employees the option to enroll in a complimentary 12-month course on credit and dark web monitoring offered by ID Experts, which will help them with identity restoration services and provide coverage for identity theft, The Times of India reported.

Digital identity theft will continue to be a big deal, especially during and after the pandemic, which has seen fraudsters coming out of the woodwork to capitalize on the frenzied, imperfect and quick shift to the digital world by many individuals and companies who had been used to paper practices.

PYMNTS reported that the toolkits debuting for fighting this kind of fraud have so far included things like digital documents, biometrics and artificial intelligence (AI)-powered verification and authentication, with the aim being toward a multi-layered approach. Using those more advanced tools, experts say, is more effective at stopping fraud than traditional password entries.