700Credit continues to work with attorneys general in various states to get approval to send out notices to consumers following last month’s cyber breach.
Ken Hill, 700Credit Managing Director, said they have notified all 37 states that require notification and completed filings. They also sent a courtesy notification to the other states.
“Where we are now, right now we’re reaching out to the states to get confirmation that we can file on our dealerships’ behalf and also send consumers notices on our dealerships’ behalf,” Hill said. “Our notices are loaded up and ready to go. We’re just waiting on states to verify, and I would say the majority have verified that we can, and we’re just trying to get some state AGs to respond.”
700Credit reported in November a breach into their system related to a previous attack on a partner’s system. The bad actor gained access to some personally identifiable information, including name, address and social security number.
Hill said the bad actor never gained full access to their system and never installed any software. 700Credit hired a forensic company to search the system and thwart any future attack.
“Subsequently, we then hired a breach law firm and notified the FBI. We notified the FTC and NADA assisted us in getting the FTC on the phone and persuading the FTC to allow us to file notification on behalf of our customers,” Hill said.
700Credit will be offering free credit monitoring for customers. They are also advising them to freeze their credit files.
“There’s also a helpline there for the consumers to call if they have questions or they just want to enable the monitoring; we will assist them with that,” Hill said.
700Credit has provided a list of names and addresses of consumers impacted to more than 6,000 dealers. Hill said the dealer community has been compassionate and understanding.
He added that they have added extra layers of security following the incident.
