Another day, another breach. Another opportunity

Under Armour has admitted that around 150 million MyFitnessPal user accounts were hacked in February of this year. The sports conglomerate stated in a press release that “an unauthorized party acquired data associated with MyFitnessPal user accounts.” The company went on to say that the  occurred last month but it only became aware of the breach earlier this week. “The company quickly took steps to determine the nature and scope of the issue and to alert the MyFitnessPal community of the incident,” read the press statement.

Over the weekend, it was reported that Saks and Lord & Taylor were hit with a data breach, with millions of credit cards exposed to hackers. The hackers have now claimed they have five million credit card and debit card numbers from the stores and have been releasing them for sale on the “dark web. So far, as of Saturday, 125,000 cards that had been used at Saks or Lord & Taylor have been released for sale by the hackers.

These breaches offer your credit union a great engagement opportunity and one whereby you can demonstrate your member commitment to a financial partnership. Here two simple steps you should take immediately.

1. Offer sound advice. Remind members of the importance of changing passwords frequently. In an app driven digital world, you can be sure millions of those MyFitnessPal passwords are similar to millions of others – including your members online banking credentials.
2. If you offer any form of digital financial management solution, remind members that reviewing aggregated accounts is an easy and secure way to monitor financial accounts. Your members have several credit cards; some with you, some with someone else.

While both these steps protect the interest of those you serve, they also protect your bottomline. Simply put, more members monitoring accounts can mitigate your risk.

Being a financial partner is a steep promise that you have made. If you don’t take steps like those above, your promises are hollow. Member trust is built on taking proactive efforts that keep members informed and aware.