8,000 People Warned After BC Pension Plan Data Leak

Exploit: Data Leak
Company: BC Pension Corporation
Industry: Government
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-pension-plan-warning-8000-privacy-breach-1.5087283

Approximately 8,000 members of the BC College Pension Plan have received notifications that their information may be at risk of exposure after a data breach was discovered. After moving offices earlier this year, the BC Pension Corporation noticed one box was unaccounted for. Contents of the box included personal information of members who worked from 1982-1997. After being unable to track the location of the box, the company played it safe and declared a data breach.

Although the company considered this to be a low-risk breach, some of the information includes names, social insurance numbers and dates of birth. There is no clear indication that this might be an attack, however, whether created by an intentional or unintentional breach, exposed data can be used in many nefarious ways in the wrong hands. Information of this caliber can easily be sold on the Dark Web and used in targeted phishing attacks.

Without investigating these types of breaches further and delaying notifying customers and authorities in a timely manner, the chance of these types of breaches becoming costly increases greatly. Those affected should be aware of the length of time that their data has been exposed and take appropriate measures.

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