Virginia-based firm WEI Mortgage disclosed recently that they have been hit by a data breach which could have led to the sensitive and personal data of their customers being exposed.
WEI Mortgage is a subsidiary of Arc Home and helps to provide quality mortgages to home buyers and owners. It covers over 45 states and has offices in New Jersey and Virginia.
A data breach notice was released by the company saying:
“WEI Mortgage LLC (“WEI”) recently discovered a data privacy incident that may affect the security of certain of personal information. We take this incident very seriously and are providing potentially affected individuals with information and access to resources to help them better protect against potential misuse of personal information, should they feel it appropriate to do so.”
In September last year, WEI Mortgage detected unusual activity in an employee’s email account which caused the company to carry out a formal investigation. The main purpose of this investigation was to confirm the strength of security of the company and to determine the nature of this event.
It was discovered that the company was a victim of a phishing attack which led to unauthorized access to email accounts of a number of employees. The WEI Mortgage breach notice said, “While the investigation found no evidence of actual or attempted misuse of personal information, the investigation revealed some personal information was present in the impacted email accounts at the time of the incident.”
The notice continued saying, “The investigation determined the information present in the impacted email account varies by individual, but may include some combination of the following: Social Security numbers, date of birth, health insurance information, health insurance group numbers, health insurance member numbers, addresses, driver’s license or state identification numbers, passport numbers, bank account information, credit or debit card information, tax identification numbers, username and passwords, loan package information, and names.”
Even though there has been no revelation regarding the size of the breach or the number of customers who were attacked ,WEI has made it clear that they take their customers data and personal information very seriously and that it is “working diligently to educate its employees against mortgage scams and to confirm the ongoing security of its networks.