Protecting data as the new gold

GOH, a former MyRepublic mobile subscriber, was one of nearly 79,400 other customers who had their personal data potentially accessed by hackers when the telco's third-party servers were compromised on Aug 29 this year. He had ported his mobile number to MyRepublic to take advantage of its cheaper rates, but has since ported back to his previous telco after the breach.

Data, including scanned copies of both sides of National Registration Identity Cards (NRICs) were potentially exposed in the MyRepublic breach. The information had been used to verify the identity of customers applying for their mobile services.

"As a service provider, I would have expected them to have higher (levels of) security," Goh says. Since the incident, he has received quite a number of scam calls, although the company says there was no evidence that the personal data had been misused when it publicly disclosed the hack on Sep 10.