Data Breach at Healthcare Retail Giant Dis-Chem Affects 3.6 Million Customers

With 165 locations throughout South Africa, four in Namibia, and one in Botswana, Dis-Chem is the second largest pharmacy chain in the country.

In a statement released recently, Dis-Chem stated that it contracts with third-party service providers and operators for specific hosted services that generate databases for the company. Certain types of personal information are essential for Dis-services, Chem’s hence the database contains them.

According to the statement, “On May 1, 2022, we discovered that an unauthorized entity had gained access to the database’s contents. We quickly launched an investigation into the issue after learning about it and assured that suitable measures were made to prevent any future incidents.”

The breach affected a total of 3687,881 data subjects, according to subsequent investigations, and personal information such as first and last names, email addresses, and cell phone numbers were accessed.

However, according to Dis-Chem, any compromised personal information may be utilized by unauthorized parties for subsequent illegal actions such as phishing attacks, email leaks, social engineering, and impersonation efforts, depending on the sort of personal information affected.

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