Thousands of Verizon employees are at risk due to an insider breach, but customer data must be safe
Verizon has notified the Office of the Maine Attorney General of an incident involving sensitive data belonging to its employees, but it does not appear to be an outright data breach or breach.
As reported by BleepingComputerthe company shared a breach notice with the US government agency stating that an employee gained unauthorized access to a file containing sensitive employee information on September 21, 2023.
The unnamed employee apparently had access to a database containing sensitive information on 63,206 employees, including people’s full names, physical addresses, Social Security Numbers (SSN), national identity information, genders, union memberships, dates of birth, and compensation information. No customer information appears to have been released.
Not with police present
Verizon realized what had happened almost three months later, on December 12, 2023.
While unauthorized access is always a risk and the appropriate authorities should be notified, this does not appear to be an outright data breach as there was no malicious intent, Verizon said.
“At this time, we have no evidence that this information has been misused or shared outside of Verizon as a result of this issue,” the breach notice reads. “We are working to ensure that our technical controls are improved to prevent situations like this from happening again and are notifying the appropriate regulators.”
Still, the company isn’t taking any chances and shared instructions on how to sign up for a two-year identity theft and credit monitoring service via the breach notification email.
In a statement shared with BleepingComputerVerizon spokesman Rich Young said the company did not notify law enforcement because there was no evidence of malicious intent. “We do not believe the information was shared externally,” Young said.
Verizon is an American telecommunications and mass media company that offers its services to more than 150 million people in the United States. As of 2022, Verizon had more than 110,000 employees and annual revenue of $136.8 billion.