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Avis’s tagline is “We try harder”—and the rental car company will certainly need to do so on the cybersecurity side after revealing a breach that exposed the information of nearly 300,000 users.
According to sample data breach notification letters sent to attorneys general in a number of states, including California, Maine, Massachusetts, Texas, and Vermont, the breach was detected on August 5. What Avis termed “unauthorized access” took place between August 3 and 6.
“After becoming aware of the incident, we immediately took steps to end the unauthorized access, began an investigation with assistance from cybersecurity experts, and alerted the relevant authorities,” Avis said in the notices.
Plan ahead. The company added that it has “worked with cybersecurity experts to develop a plan to enhance security protections for the impacted business application.” It’s unclear how the breach occurred and the extent to which the company’s security practices were prepared for an attack beforehand.
Ravi Simhambhatla is the chief digital officer at Avis’s parent company, Avis Budget Group, which also owns the Budget and Zipcar car rental companies.
In what has become standard in breaches, Avis is offering affected consumers a complimentary one-year membership to the credit monitoring service Equifax for identity protection.
Data driver. As IT Brew has reported, cars are increasingly becoming powerful surveillance devices, monitoring your personal data, up to and including collecting information about your sex life. Car rental companies, with varied users of their vehicles, thus have troves of data on individuals.
Bruce Schneier, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, told IT Brew earlier this year that the ability for autos to track drivers makes them a front in the privacy fight.
“Your phone is such an exquisite surveillance device that it has everything already,” Schneier said. “So, what these additional devices do is they get new data: temperature of your house, braking and accelerating [in your car]…but mostly it is another player getting the same data.”