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Story URL: http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,11018663,00.htm

Powergen scandal: Powergen says sorry

By Graham Hayday

Published: Wednesday 19 July 2000

Powergen has finally admitted that it was to blame for exposing the debit card details of thousands of its customers online.

The climb-down came after silicon.com broke the story yesterday following a tip-off from one of the utility giant's customers, John Chamberlain

In a prepared statement, Powergen's retail managing director, Mike Wagner said: "We take security of customer information extremely seriously and I am sorry that this has happened and that customers may have been inconvenienced.

"The web site was immediately closed down and our systems experts confirmed that this was a one-off incident. Initial investigations showed that the information which had been accessed was in a file which due to a technical error was temporarily outside of the security gate of the system. This was immediately corrected and new procedures introduced to eliminate the possibility of it happening again. There was no breach of the security of our main customer database.

"We are directly contacting customers who pay accounts via the internet and will assure them that the problem has been corrected. We have also set up a free phone customer information hotline and urge any of our customers who are concerned to contact this number (0800 0157755). As an additional security measure we are advising customers to change their card numbers and will offer compensation for the inconvenience. Meanwhile the online transactions site remains closed.

"We are now embarking on a wider reaching review of systems security in conjunction with external expert consultants and will be in further contact with John Chamberlain to assist us with this review. We plan to publish the results of the external consultants' audit on our web site.

"This has clearly raised some more general concerns about payment over the internet. I will be asking banks, other financial services organisations and companies engaging in transactions over the web to discuss these wider issues with us. However, we remain committed to the internet as customers increasingly find it a convenient way of doing business with us."

silicon.com will have more on this statement later...