The Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) is investigating Ticketmaster Canada as a response to the big data ransomware attack in May that affected 560 million customers worldwide.

The investigation began as a response to a complaint, and the OPC will look into how Ticketmaster complied with the federal private-sector privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

“Data breaches have surged over the last decade, and we have seen a significant increase in the scale and complexity of these incidents. Ticketmaster holds the personal information of millions of Canadians,” said Philippe Dufresne, Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

“The investigation will allow us to understand why this cyber incident happened and what must be done to address this situation and prevent it from happening again.”

$500,00 ransom demand

Live Nation Entertainment Inc, the US-based ticket sales and distribution company and the owner of Ticketmaster, confirmed earlier that it had been exposed to “unauthorized activity” on its database. The infamous hacker group ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the attack, and demanded $500,00 in ransom to not sell the stolen data. Allegedly, the hacked data included names, addresses, phone numbers and partial credit card details from Ticketmaster users worldwide.

The hacker group has also been linked to other big data breaches, with targets such as AT&T Wireless, Microsoft, and Santander.