AT&T pays minor fine to resolve long-running data breach investigation

Back in 2023 a former AT&T cloud vendor got hacked and 8.9 million customers had their data exposed. AT&T has now agreed to pay a $13 million fine to close the investigation into why data which was supposed to have been erased years ago was still around.

The contract between AT&T and the vendor had come to an end years before the data breach. Thankfully, the vendor didn’t hold extremely sensitive data like passwords, social security numbers or credit card information. Instead, most of the data that was exposed was about the customers’ accounts, including things like their bill balance.

The FCC’s charges levied against AT&T included failure to uphold the terms of their contract with the vendor regarding disposal of customer data. This data was supposed to have been gotten rid of back in 2017 yet it was found by hackers six years later.

With the $13 million fine AT&T has “resolved” the investigation into why this had been possible. The FCC claims that the changes AT&T has been addressed to make will cost the company more than the fine it has paid. These changes include stricter oversight of contracted vendors to ensure a similar incident doesn’t take place again.