Pam Golding Properties has experienced what it has described as a “cyber incident” that likely led to the unauthorised access of personal client information stored on its CRM system, Alchemy.

The company, which is a major player in the high-end real estate market in South Africa, said in a statement posted on its website that no banking details, financial information, commercial information or other documents were compromised.

The incident occurred last Friday and involved an unknown third party that gained access to its systems through 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,” the company said.

“We have notified affected clients/parties of the compromise in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act and reported details of this matter to the Information Regulator as required by law. We have also reported it to South African Police Service and a case number has been allocated,” it added.

“We are taking this incident extremely seriously and are taking numerous steps to contain the incident and prevent any further recurrence.”

Secured

Pam Golding said the affected user accounts have been secured, and all active sessions have been “terminated”, with all user account passwords updated.

“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.

“We have also appointed independent cybersecurity specialists to investigate the incident and will adopt any appropriate recommendations to further enhance our existing access control measures.”

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The company said client information may have been viewed or queried as a result of the incident.

“If personal details were accessed, there is a small risk of identity fraud, although we have no evidence of misuse at this time,” it said. Information that may have been compromised includes customer contact details and ID numbers. Any electronic copies of client documents provided to Pam Golding were not accessed or viewed by the third party.”

“Accordingly, we have advised affected clients to be cautious about clicking on links and providing sensitive information, including bank Pins and user login passwords. We have cautioned them that if they suspect that a person other than one of our authorised agents is attempting to contact them or obtain their personal information, they should contact our information officer via [email protected], or the agent they usually deal with.”

The company said it is still gathering information to learn how access was obtained by the third-party “threat actor”, which it said was based outside of South Africa’s borders. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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