General Electric suffers data breach after service provider hack

Personal information of current and former employees as well as beneficiaries was obtained by an unauthorized party

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General Electric (GE) has revealed that one of its service providers has fallen victim to adata breachwhich resulted in the personally identifiable information of current and former employees as well as beneficiaries being exposed online.

In anotice of data breachfiled with the Office of the California Attorney General, the multinational company explained thatCanonBusiness Process Services (Canon), a GE service provider, had one of its employee email accounts breached by an unauthorized party last month, saying:

“We were notified on February 28, 2020 that Canon had determined that, between approximately February 3 - 14, 2020, an unauthorized party gained access to an email account that contained documents of certain GE employees, former employees and beneficiaries entitled to benefits that were maintained on Canon’s systems.”

The documents obtained by the unauthorized party may have contained the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account numbers, passport numbers, dates of birth and other information of GE employees and their beneficiaries.

Service provider hack

According to the notice of data breach, GE’s systems were not affected by Canon’s security breach, though the company has indicated that it is taking preventative measures to prevent a similar incident from taking place in the future.

For the GE employees and subsidiaries affected, Canon is offeringidentity protectionand credit monitoring services for two years at no cost throughExperian. However, they’ll have to sign up by June 30th to take advantage of Canon’s offer.

GE has also set up a support hotline which affected individuals can call for more information on the incident.

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ViaBleepingComputer

After working with the TechRadar Pro team for the last several years, Anthony is now the security and networking editor at Tom’s Guide where he covers everything from data breaches and ransomware gangs to the best way to cover your whole home or business with Wi-Fi. When not writing, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home.

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