On SBI’s alleged financial data leak of millions of customers, bank says ‘we are investigating’

The servers of the SBI, which is the largest bank in India with a 23% market share in assets, was reportedly not protected by a password.

According to a TechCrunch report, an unprotected server allowed anyone to access financial information on millions of its customers.

New Delhi: At a time when banking systems are adopting approaches to achieve its digital business outcomes, the State Bank of India is allegedly embroiled in financial data leak of millions of SBI customers. According to a TechCrunch report, an unprotected server allowed anyone to access financial information on millions of its customers. Giving a statement on the matter, the SBI said that they follow stringent protocols on data security. The bank also said that they are now investigating the alleged data leak and will update when the investigation is complete.

In light of the recent news item, regarding an alleged data incident, please find below our statement: pic.twitter.com/mu4xn12QgL

— State Bank of India (@TheOfficialSBI) January 31, 2019

The servers of the SBI, which is the largest bank in India with a 23% market share in assets, was reportedly not protected by a password which gave anyone the access to the banking data of millions of customers. The data includes the customer’s mobile numbers, partial account numbers, account balance, recent transactions and more. The report also states that the unprotected server was present in SBI's Mumbai data centre and had stored two months of data from SBI Quick which is one of the bank's customer service product. TechCrunch reported, “the database also had daily archives of millions of text messages each, going back to December, allowing anyone to access a detailed view into millions of customers’ finances.”