October 6, 2015 By Shane Schick 2 min read

If you hear from Scottrade in the next few days, it may not be about a promising investment opportunity. The discount brokerage is contacting those who may have been affected by a security breach involving an estimated 4.6 million clients.

A statement from Scottrade explained that the data breach likely took place between the end of 2013 and the first months of last year. Scottrade said it believes cybercriminals were primarily trying to acquire customer contact information. However, other personal data such as Social Security numbers was likely compromised, as well. Federal authorities asked the company to hold off on informing customers until now, though the breach came to light in August.

The Wall Street Journal pointed out that news of the Scottrade security breach comes just in time for the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). It also follows similar security incidents in the financial services sector involving JPMorgan Chase and others. A Scottrade spokeswoman told the newspaper the full extent of potentially affected customers remains uncertain.

Dark Reading interviewed a security expert who noted that Scottrade has struggled with IT errors that led to fines for failing to provide proper logs of trading activity. Although the FBI and similar law enforcement agencies need time to properly investigate these attacks, others said Scottrade should have been able to notify customers about the security breach before now.

Scottrade hasn’t seen any suspicious activity involving the information stolen in the security breach so far, but these might be early days, Wired reported. If contact details were the primary motive, it’s possible they could be used to send spam emails as part of more elaborate phishing schemes that take advantage of investors. Scottrade has said it will provide customers a full year of free identity theft protection, but that may not do much to reassure them given the magnitude of the hack.

Security researcher Brian Krebs suggested that if a slew of email stock scams is the worst that happens to Scottrade customers, they should be grateful. The bigger issue is how this security breach took place and how other firms could work to prevent similar problems in the future.

More from

What does resilience in the cyber world look like in 2025 and beyond?

6 min read -  Back in 2021, we ran a series called “A Journey in Organizational Resilience.” These issues of this series remain applicable today and, in many cases, are more important than ever, given the rapid changes of the last few years. But the term "resilience" can be difficult to define, and when we define it, we may limit its scope, missing the big picture.In the age of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI), the prevalence of breach data from infostealers and the near-constant…

Airplane cybersecurity: Past, present, future

4 min read - With most aviation processes now digitized, airlines and the aviation industry as a whole must prioritize cybersecurity. If a cyber criminal launches an attack that affects a system involved in aviation — either an airline’s system or a third-party vendor — the entire process, from safety to passenger comfort, may be impacted.To improve security in the aviation industry, the FAA recently proposed new rules to tighten cybersecurity on airplanes. These rules would “protect the equipment, systems and networks of transport…

Protecting your digital assets from non-human identity attacks

4 min read - Untethered data accessibility and workflow automation are now foundational elements of most digital infrastructures. With the right applications and protocols in place, businesses no longer need to feel restricted by their lack of manpower or technical capabilities — machines are now filling those gaps.The use of non-human identities (NHIs) to power business-critical applications — especially those used in cloud computing environments or when facilitating service-to-service connections — has opened the doors for seamless operational efficiency. Unfortunately, these doors aren’t the…

Topic updates

Get email updates and stay ahead of the latest threats to the security landscape, thought leadership and research.
Subscribe today