Liberty refuses to pay ransom after hackers hit computer systems

The threatened data leak comes as Munro pushes ahead with a turnaround of the largest provider of long-term insurance products to affluent South Africans, which has struggled to grow sales into a weak local economy.

Since being appointed to the post in May last year, Munro has sought to improve customer service by revamping its call centre, while simplifying its offerings that had become too complex for its 3 000 agents to market and finding ways of improving returns at its asset-management unit.

Liberty couldn’t comment on the identity of outside parties that gained access to the IT infrastructure, or divulge the payment demanded because the matter is still subject to investigation by various authorities, Munro said.

No losses

The 60-year-old insurer has more than 2.5 million life-insurance policies and administers more than 10 000 retirement plans and 500 000 individual and institutional investment customers, according to its website.

“There is no evidence at this point in time that there is any financial loss to any of our customers,” he said. “We have gone to extreme lengths to enforce our IT infrastructure to ensure our customers’ information is protected.”

Liberty sent text messages to clients informing them of the attack. “We totally understand the concerns they might have about the impact of this act of criminality,” he said.

Information that was stolen probably was restricted to Liberty emails and customers of Standard Bank Group [JSE:SBK], which controls Liberty, wouldn’t be affected unless they were also the insurer’s customers, according to Munro. The breach is limited to Liberty, he said.

“There is no inter-connection when it comes to Liberty and Standard Bank systems,” he said. “This was an infiltration of our network and a specific email system or repository of email data. It looks like the bulk of the data they stole from us is email, relatively recent rather than deeply dated.”

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