Pam Golding Properties says it has experienced a cyber incident that resulted in unauthorised access to some of the personal information stored on its customer relationship management (CRM) system hosted on its servers in South Africa.

“This information pertains to some of our clients. It is important to note that no banking details, financial information, commercial information and/or other documents were compromised.”

The property group said that on Friday 7 March 2025, an unknown third party, gained unauthorised access to its system using a user account.

“As soon as we became aware of the security compromise, we took immediate action to secure our systems and removed all unauthorised access.

“While investigating the impact of this incident, we also immediately began implementing steps to contain the incident and prevent any further compromises,” it said.

Pam Golding said it has notified affected clients/parties of the compromise in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) and reported details of this matter to the Information Regulator as required by law.

“We have also reported it to SAPS and a case number has been allocated.”

It added that it is taking numerous steps to contain the incident and prevent any further recurrence.

“The affected user accounts have been secured, all active sessions have been terminated, and we have reset passwords for all our user accounts system-wide. We have reviewed all system access logs to determine the extent of the breach and identify any affected data.

“We are patching any potential vulnerabilities and reinforcing our security protocol, and implementing additional monitoring tools to detect and respond to any future potentially suspicious activity,” it said.

Pam Golding has also appointed independent cybersecurity specialists to investigate the incident and will adopt any appropriate recommendations to further enhance its existing access control measures.

The group said it has made clients aware of potential risks, namely:

– as a third party accessed its system using a user account, client information may have been viewed or queried,
– cybercriminals sometimes use stolen information to send fraudulent emails or messages, purporting to be from trusted sources, and
– if personal details were accessed, there is a small risk of identity fraud, although Pam Golding said it has no evidence of misuse at this time.

“Accordingly, we have advised affected clients to be cautious about clicking on links and providing sensitive information, including bank pins and user login passwords.”