It was just about two weeks ago that I was writing about Home Depot’s accounts being hacked and 56 million users affected. It seems that hackers have been working hard to improve their trade. In addition to Target (News - Alert), Michaels, SuperValu and Neiman Marcus that were all hacked in the past 12 months we can now add JPMorgan to that list.

A giant in the U.S. banking industry, JPMorgan Chase issued an update with information concerning what can possibly be referred to as the second largest breach due to a cyberattack. Back in 2007, there was an even larger incident at TJX Companies that documented 90 million records being compromised.  JPMorgan comes in a close second with 83 million records being hacked.

The information revealed on October 2, 2014 is something that a lot of people should be concerned about. Of the 83 million records, approximately 76 million current accounts and seven million small enterprises were affected. The information, which was accessed by hackers included names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of its clients, as well as internal information of the company. On the positive side, JPMorgan did say that there was no evidence that account numbers, passwords, user IDs, birth dates or Social Security numbers had been stolen.

Not being a security expert, I am not really sure how the information that was taken can be used, but according to the real experts we could expect to see an increase in crime as scammers will probably try and use the stolen information to engage in various types of fraud. JPMorgan did say that at this time it has not seen any “unusual customer fraud” since the hack was discovered.

The FBI has been trying to determine the origin of such a sophisticated cyberattack and if the motive was economic or part of an intelligence operation. The American banking sector has been a target of frequent hacking in the last few years, and most of the attacks had an economic motive. That is why this case, which does not seem to be of the same profile, has caused special concern to the authorities.

Mark Rasch, is a former federal cybercrimes prosecutor. He is suggesting that the bank’s customers should be checking all of their accounts and keeping a watchful eye out for anything that resembles fraud. He said, "All of this data is useful to hackers and identity thieves. The kind of information that was stolen is not sensitive itself, but is frequently used to validate people's identities."

Patricia Wexler is a company spokeswoman and she said that the bank is not offering credit monitoring to its customers because no financial information, account data or personally identifiable information was compromised. The institution also said on its website that it does not believe they need to change their passwords or account information.

While they may still have faith in their security measures, this definitely seems like the type of situation where everyone should change their passwords, pin numbers and anything else that might give other people access to their accounts. When you consider that the type of information that was taken is generally used to verify an account holder, changes seem to be appropriate.

Adallom is a cybersecurity firm, its vice president Tal Klein said "Criminals could literally take on the identities of these 83 million businesses and people. That's the biggest concern. Until now the assumption has been that the companies that get breached are the ones that have poor security practices, but we know that JPMorgan had a good security program and that they invest heavily in this area. So what we are waking up to is that the fundamental nature of security is broken." Klein believes that people’s confidence in the security of banks, along with other institutions presumed to be secure could be undermined.

As of now, this is still an ongoing investigation. Unfortunately, as with a home break in, time is on the side of the hacker. It could take months to figure out all of the data that was accessed. The timing is also something that I feel should be of some concern. We are just about getting ready to start the holiday shopping season, could this information be used to open store accounts? While JPMorgan is downplaying this as not being anything to worry about, perhaps anyone with an account should be concerned.