Massive cyberattack hits State-owned Air India

In an official statement on Friday, Air India reported a massive data breach at SITA, its data processing company. It also said that the news of the data breach, which has compromised data of 4. 5 million passengers, was given to it only on February 25, and the nature of data leaked was only told to them on March 25th and 5th April. The sophisticated cyber attack took place on SITA's servers at its data centre in Atlanta, United States of America. In March, it had said that a cyberattack had been flagged at SITA, but not given further details.

Experts say that this incident could slow down the privatisation process due to litigation risks for the airline

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What is SITA? SITA is a multinational information technology (IT) company and is the world's leading service provider of IT business solutions and communication services for the aviation industry. It is based in Geneva, Switzerland. It provides services such as reservation systems, passenger processing, etc. It claims to serve 90% of the air transport industry.

Air India had entered into a deal with the firm in 2017. At Air India, SITA had implemented services such as the frequent flyer programme, online booking engine and an automated boarding control.

In early March, it had announced that it had undergone a data breach involving passenger data. It refused to disclose any more information and said that it had notified the affected airlines - like Finnair, Air New Zealand, Malaysia Airlines, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa etc. SITA has said that after investigation, it has been revealed that hackers were able to access their systems for 22 days, and thus, it wasn't merely a one-off incident. It was rather a highly sophisticated cyber-attack.

What type of data has been compromised?

Personal data of millions of passengers registered between August 26th, 2011 and February 20th, 2021 has been compromised. This includes Name, Date of Birth, Contact Information, Passport details, Ticket information, Frequent flyer details and Credit Card Information. Air India clarified that CVV/CVC data of credit cards was not held by SITA, and urged passengers to change passwords in order to ensure the safety of their personal data.

What are the remedial measures taken by Air India?

Air India claimed that it has secured the compromised servers, investigated the incident, engaged with external specialists, changed the passwords of their frequent flyer programme, and alerted the credit card issuers.

How have cyber attacks affected other Indian firms?

Of late, many Indian companies have been targets of cyberattacks. In late March, payment company MobiKwik revealed that it was investigating claims of a data breach that had reportedly exposed information of 100 million customers. Indian airline SpiceJet too had experienced a breach, recently affecting 1. 2 million passengers. Another incident was a security lapse on Jio Platforms, that exposed data of some users who used it to check their coronavirus symptoms. With such occurrences increasing, there is no doubt that our data is becoming more vulnerable with each passing day.

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