Akasa airline suffers data breach, passengers’ personal information leaked
Mangalore Today News Network
New Delhi, Aug 29, 2022: Akasa Air informed on Sunday that it has suffered a data breach resulting in unauthorised individuals gaining access to user information. In a communication posted on its website, the airline apologised to its customers for the data breach and the incident has been "self-reported" to the nodal agency, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
“A temporary technical configuration error related to our login and sign-up service was reported to us on Thursday, August 25, 2022," the company said.
"As a result of this configuration error, some Akasa Air registered user information limited to names, gender, email addresses and phone numbers may have been viewed by unauthorized individuals. We can confirm that aside from the above details, no travel-related information, travel records or payment information was compromised," an official statement from the airline read.
On being made aware of this, we immediately stopped this unauthorised access by completely shutting down the associated functional elements of our system. Subsequently, having added additional controls to address this situation, we have resumed our login and sign-up services, the communication said.
Akasa Air, the first Indian carrier to be launched in nearly a decade, operated its inaugural flight on August 7 from Mumbai to Ahmedabad. Billionaire and stock market expert Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, who passed away earlier this month, had made substantial investment in the airline.
"We would like to clarify that basis our records there was no intentional hacking attempt, but that the situation was reported by a research expert through a journalist for which we are grateful. As a part of our commitment to be always transparent, we proactively shared this information with our customers who could have been potentially impacted," the airline said.
Akasa Air’s Co-Founder and Chief Information Officer Anand Srinivasan said the system security and protection of customer information is paramount.
“At Akasa Air, system security and protection of customer information is paramount, and our focus is to always provide a secure and reliable customer experience. While extensive protocols are in place to prevent incidents of such nature, we have undertaken additional measures to ensure that the security of all our systems is even further enhanced. We will continue to maintain our robust security protocols, engaging wherever applicable, with partners, researchers, and security experts from whom we can benefit to strengthen our systems," he said in a statement.
Courtesy: India Today