Westpac, who has been having major problems with their IT operations, has a new problems with customers now being told that the Company has had a major “computer crash,” resulting in the bank being unable to activate thousands of new EMC RSA electronic security tags which were sent to customers this week.Earlier this week 4Square Media received a letter from Westpac along with a new RSA tag which is believed to have been issued after EMC owners of RSA advised the bank that prior security tags may have been compromised following a security breach.
A letter accompanying the tag asked customers to call a Westpac help line to activate the RSA tag and link it with a user.
On the first call to the call centre 4SQM was told that the call centre was “swamped with calls and that Westpac were taking phone numbers to call customers back.
36 hours after making the first call and after not getting a call back 4SQM made a second call where we were told that Westpac was currently experiencing a “major computer crash”.
The operator said “I am sorry we are unable to process any activations due to a major computer crash. We have been like this for two day and we apologise”.
When asked when users would be able to activate the tokens she said “We don’t know the IT guys don’t know what’s wrong. We will call you back when the problem is sorted. It could take a few days”.
Westpac are not saying why they have issued new tags or whether they have identified any security breaches with the compromised EMC RSA Secure ID Token system.
Paul Marriage, the Head of Group Public Relations, said that he would investigate the issue and come back to us.
We will follow up on his statement.
