Verizon, the major telecommunications provider, has suffered a data security breach with over 14 million US customers' personal details exposed on the Internet after NICE Systems, a third-party vendor, mistakenly left the sensitive users’ details open on a server.

Chris Vickery, researcher and director of cyber risk research at security firm UpGuard, discovered the exposed data on an unprotected Amazon S3 cloud server that was fully downloadable and configured to allow public access.

The exposed data includes sensitive information of millions of customers, including their names, phone numbers, and account PINs (personal identification numbers), which is enough for anyone to access an individual's account, even if the account is protected by two-factor authentication.



According to the researcher, it is unknown that why Verizon has allowed a 3rd party company to collect call details of its users, however, it appears that NICE Systems monitors the efficiency of its call-center operators for Verizon.

The exposed data contained records of customers who called the Verizon's customer services in the past 6 months, which are recorded, obtained and analyzed by NICE.