Flagstar Bank notifies 1.5 million customers of data breach

Michigan-based Flagstar Bank is notifying over 1.5 million customers of a massive data breach that took place during a cyberattack at the end of 2021.

According to a letter to impacted customers, Flagstar’s corporate network was compromised in December 2021 when an unauthorized party accessed files containing sensitive personal information of customers.

“Flagstar recently experienced a cyber incident that involved unauthorized access to our network,” the data breach notification reads. “After an extensive forensic investigation and manual document review, we discovered on June 2, 2022 that certain impacted files containing your personal information were accessed and/or acquired from our network between December 3, 2021 and December 4, 2021.

Full names and Social Security numbers may have been among the data exposed, raising the risk of crimes of identity theft against the institution’s customers.

The bank has reported the cyberattack to police and says it will continue to take measures to make sure similar incidents won’t happen again.

“Upon learning of the incident, we promptly activated our incident response plan, engaged external cybersecurity professionals experienced in handling these types of incidents, and reported the matter to federal law enforcement,” Flagstar added.

Affected clients will receive two years of identity monitoring. Despite a lack of evidence that customer information has been misused, Flagstar is urging clients to remain vigilant and review financial account statements and credit reports for any suspicious activity.

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