Background: Salesforce, founded in 1999, is one of the world’s largest customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. The platform is used by more than 150,000 companies globally to send emails, store data and engage with customers.

What happened: A hacker group claims to have breached Salesforce’s systems and stolen data from 39 major companies - including Toyota, Google, Chanel, IKEA, McDonald’s, and even Australia’s own Qantas.

What else: The hacker group is demanding a ransom from Salesforce, threatening to leak the stolen data on the dark web by Friday (US time) if it isn’t paid. If Salesforce continues to refuse paying a ransom, the data of millions of customers around the world could be exposed online.

What's the key learning?

💡In today’s digital world, data has become extremely valuable... but also extremely vulnerable. Even if a company locks down its own systems, it’s only as strong as its weakest link.

💡Third-party vendors like cloud providers, call centres, and software partners such as Salesforce often become that weak link. When they get hacked, customer data becomes collateral damage.

💡This isn’t Qantas’s first rodeo either. Back in July, 5.7 million frequent flyers were exposed after a call centre operator was tricked into granting access to Qantas’s Salesforce system... proving that one small breach can open big doors for cybercriminals.