The American tech giant General Electic (GE) now emerges as the latest victim of a security incident. Although, the issues they faced were via their service provider Canon. General Electric (GE) recently disclosed the data breach.
General Electric Data Breach
US-based giant General Electric (GE) have disclosed a data breach after one of their service providers suffered a cyber attack. Revealing the details in their security notice, they stated that GE collaborates with Canon, the firm that was hacked, for documentation processing.
As elaborated, GE received the alert about the hack that happened by accessing one of Canon’s employee’s email account.
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 breached email account had contained documents including detailed personal information about GE employees. Hence, the incident indirectly affected GE employees as well. Regarding the breached information,
The relevant personal information, which was contained in documents such as direct deposit forms, driver’s licenses, passports, birth certificates, marriage certificates, death certificates, medical child support orders, tax withholding forms, beneficiary designation forms and applications for benefits such as retirement, severance and death benefits with related forms and documents, may have included names, addresses, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account numbers, passport numbers, dates of birth, and other information contained in the relevant forms.
What Next
GE assured that they started taking appropriate measures to ensure system security. Though, the incident did not directly affect any of GE systems. Yet, they were working with Canon to determine how the incident occurred and what should be done to prevent its reoccurrence.
Presently, it remains undisclosed as to how many GE employees suffered during this data breach. Nonetheless, Canon are offering 2-year free credit monitoring via Experian to affected individuals.
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