Data relating to a range of Fortune 100 companies has been found exposed on three Amazon Web Services Inc. S3  storage instances belonging to Attunity Inc., a data integration and big data management firm acquired by QlikTech International AB in February.

Discovered by researchers at UpGuard Inc. and publicized late last week, the exposed data, which totaled at least 1 terabyte, included a large collection of internal business documents, email correspondence, system passwords, sales and marketing contact information and project specifications.

That data also included documents from Attunity clients, including Ford Motor Co., Netflix Inc. and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

The researchers did not analyze all the files they downloaded, noting that “exhaustively documenting the files associated with each of thousands of companies is not feasible or necessary for the research team’s purpose of raising awareness of the risk of data leaks.”

“Attunity’s business is to replicate and migrate data into data lakes for centralized analytics,” the researchers added. “The risks to Attunity posed by exposed credentials, information and communications, then are risks to the security of the data they process.”

Qlik, now the owner of Attunity, confirmed the data breach, saying personnel responded quickly to ensure that data was secured. While not addressing how it occurred in the first place, the company went on to note that it has “engaged outside security firms to conduct independent security evaluations.”

“We take this matter seriously and are committed to concluding this investigation as soon as possible,” a spokesperson said. As to whether the data had been accessed for nefarious purposes, the spokesperson added that “at this point in the investigation, indications are that the only external access to data was by the security firm that contacted us.”

Tim Erlin, vice president of product management and strategy at cybersecurity firm Tripwire Inc., told SiliconANGLE that there’s no excuse for leaving data unprotected in AWS storage.

“This isn’t a new problem and it’s not a technically complex issue to address,” Erlin said. “Amazon has taken steps to make the access status of storage buckets more obvious and security vendors offer tools to automate checking these kinds of settings. It’s time to start asking your suppliers and partners tough questions about data security.”

Image: Qlik