JP Morgan, America’s biggest bank, has revealed that it suffered a cyber attack which impacted 76 million private and seven million business customers in the US.

Contact information such as names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses were accessed in the attack, but JP Morgan has said that critical information like account and social security numbers were still safe.

The attack was filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday – October 2, 2014.

JP Morgan says it is unlikely customers will need to take any action, and the bank is not offering credit monitoring services because it believes no financial information was taken.

The bank is ‘vigilantly monitoring’ the situation and is cooperating fully with government agencies over the attack.

This is just one of a string of highly publicized attacks that have recently hit the headlines in the US. Home Depot was subject to scrutiny when 56 million payment cards were affected by a data breach and Target also came under the spotlight when 40 million payment cards were affected.

In order to protect customer data it is absolutely vital that organizations – businesses, banks, government agencies, retailers and others – implement robust information security management systems (ISMSs). ISO 27001 is the international information security standard which ensures cyber security whilst maintaining a competitive advantage, and against which an ISMS can be certified.

Find out more about ISO 27001 >>