In the settlement with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC,) T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS has pledged to significantly improve its cybersecurity infrastructure.
What Happened: According to the FCC, T-Mobile has agreed to key future commitments as part of settling the investigations.
These include addressing core security vulnerabilities, enhancing cyber hygiene, and implementing modern frameworks such as zero trust and phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication.
The telecom behemoth will also remit $15.75 million in civil penalties to the U.S. Treasury, mirroring its internal cybersecurity investment.
“Consumers’ data is too important and much too sensitive to receive anything less than the best cybersecurity protections. We will continue to send a strong message to providers entrusted with this delicate information that they need to beef up their systems or there will be consequences,” stated FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a release on Monday.
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T-Mobile has been plagued by multiple data breaches over recent years, jeopardizing the personal data of millions of customers, including social security numbers, addresses, and driver’s license numbers.
The settlement brings closure to several investigations into T-Mobile’s cybersecurity incidents in 2021, 2022, and 2023. The FCC noted that these breaches varied in nature, exploitation, and apparent methods of attack.
In August, T-Mobile paid a $60 million penalty for failing to report unauthorized access to sensitive data, breaching its national security agreement upon acquiring Sprint.
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Why It Matters: In January last year, it was reported that a data breach at T-Mobile put 37 million customers at risk. The company had to book significant expenses to manage the fallout.
Just a month later, T-Mobile faced a major network outage in the U.S., forcing Apple’s smartphones to go into “SOS” mode. The SOS icon shows up on the iPhone status bar when a cellular network is accessible for emergency calls.
However, despite these setbacks, earlier this month, T-Mobile announced plans to raise $2.5 billion through a secondary senior notes offering for general corporate purposes.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Verizon Communications VZ said that it had fully resolved a network disruption that affected thousands of U.S. customers — just hours after the FCC stated it would investigate the issue.
Earlier that day, Downdetector, a site monitoring tech outages, received over 100,000 reports. By 8 p.m. ET, the number had dropped to around 2,500.
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