Capital One hacking holds important lessons for Singapore

MONDAY'S announcement by US bank Capital One that data on some 106 million customers in America was stolen by a software engineer has shaken up the banking industry. This is one of the biggest ever data breaches.

The hacker, 33-year-old Paige Thompson from Seattle, went by the moniker "erratic" online and used to work for Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is yet unclear if her actions were driven solely by criminal intent. But one major concern is, prima facie, the relative ease with which she managed to get into the highly secure database of a bank that is not just the 10th largest in the US but one with a long-held reputation for its digital prowess.

Predictably, questions have again been raised about how safe consumer data is in the hands of service providers. Data, especially personal data, has become the new currency of today's rapidly digitalising global economy. For hackers, there is financial profit to be gained from selling such data, but there could be even more nefarious motives. The Capital One breach, which occurred in March, is but the latest that has come to light in a string of high-profile data break-ins across the world, including Singapore. Other big names that fell victim to cyber attacks include credit monitoring firm Equifax and Internet giant Yahoo.