KINGSTON, Jamaica — Financial Institution CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank Limited has put some customers of its credit card services on alert following “a security breach” at a facility of one of its third party service providers.

 The Bank in correspondence to customers recently said the incident “may potentially affect some personal information”.

As such it said the information “may have included” person’s names, addresses, telephone numbers, identification information, card numbers and expiry dates.

The Institution hastened to point out that it has “not detected any instances of clients accounts being compromised”.

“However, we continue to monitor for any suspicious activity and ask our clients to do the same, online where possible,” the correspondence went on to note.

In the meantime FirstCaribbean said “all of (its) fraud protection coverage remains in effect”.

The Bank said it has also implemented enhanced monitoring at CIBC FirstCaribbean and with its Credit Card company partners and apologised profusely for the “situation”.

“We take all matters regarding client confidentiality seriously. We will ensure that you are assisted in any way possible with respect to this issue,” it said further.

Some two weeks ago Cybercrimes experts at the Organised Crime Investigative Division of the Jamaica Constabulary urged the Committee of Parliament now reviewing the Cybercrimes Act yesterday to capture some 25 types of Cybercrimes “not properly addressed by the current 2010 Cybercrimes Act”.

In the list of 25 areas the JCF says must be addressed by the Act is the issue of phishing which consists of-pulling out confidential information from persons accounts secretly for fraudulent use such as scamming,  Cyber stalking or repeated acts of harassment of persons online, Cyber threat, spamming, dissemination of obscene materials and data theft among other things.

The police also made a strident call at that meeting for sanctions where institutions fail to report breaches of the Cybercrimes act. They said this was particularly so in the case of Banks and other financial institutions who although they have lost “millions” to such breaches remain mum out of embarrassment and fear of attracting other leeches while at the same time unwittingly giving criminals more opportunity to bleed them dry.

In the meantime the police said hackers have continued to “laugh at the law because of the current penalties which are just a slap on the wrist”.