Punjab National Bank on Saturday dismissed a news report that had claimed that sensitive information on 10,000 debit and credit card accounts of the bank were exposed in a breach, The Times of India reported. In a statement to the stock exchange, the bank also denied appointing accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to investigate the Rs 11,380-crore scam that businessmen Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi allegedly perpetrated.
“The bank’s security infrastructure is strong enough, and it has taken all necessary technology steps to safeguard customer data,” PNB said in its statement.
In its report, the Asia Times had quoted a top official at data-monitoring company CloudSek Information Security as saying that his company had detected the breach on February 20 and informed Punjab National Bank the next day. The leaked information includes names, account expiry dates, Personal Identification Numbers and Card Verification Values, according to the report. The company could not confirm whether the leaked information was authentic.
On the news report about PricewaterhouseCoopers being appointed to investigate the alleged fraud, Punjab National Bank said it had ignored the bid from the accounting firm because of the Securities and Exchange Board of India’s order from January 10. The order barred PricewaterhouseCoopers from auditing listed companies for two years. Punjab National Bank said it was considering the bids from other accounting companies to investigate the cases.
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