California-based Select Education Group said it experienced a cyber security incident that compromised the sensitive personal information of almost 70,000 individuals.

Select Education Group (SEG) is a private post-secondary education group operating across five different locations in California. With institutes like Institute of Technology, National Holistic Institute, Bauman College, Fremont University, and Arch USA under its wing, it caters to thousands of young aspiring individuals.

In a recent data breach notification filed with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, SEG said that it suffered a cyber security incident that resulted in unauthorised access to portions of its internal network.

The organisation immediately launched an internal investigation, with assistance from third party cyber security experts, to determine the nature and scope of the incident and notified relevant law enforcement authorities.

“Computer systems within our network were accessed by a sophisticated threat actor using techniques that were able to evade detection by our information security defenses,” the Group said.

“Upon discovering the situation, we promptly took these systems offline, notified law enforcement, and engaged cybersecurity experts to investigate. Through those efforts, we determined that a criminal threat actor had access to our computer systems on or around November 5, 2023.”

The compromised data includes names, Social Security Numbers, billing and payment records, and academic records. The filing with the state regulator revealed that at least 67,097 individuals were impacted by the incident.

“We have been working with external cyber security experts to investigate what happened and strengthen our computer network. We are notifying you now that we know what information was involved,” SEG CEO Rick Wood added.

While SEG did not find any evidence of the compromised data being misused, it has urged all affected individuals to remain vigilant, review their credit reports and financial statements on a regular basis, and report suspicious transactions to relevant law enforcement authorities.

The organisation is also offering one year of complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft protection services through Cyberscout to all the individuals affected by the data security incident.

In November, a relatively new group of threat actors calling themselves the BlackSuit ransomware group claimed responsibility for the cyber attack on Select Education Group and listed the institute as a victim on its data leak site.

BlackSuit #ransomware group has added Select Education Group (https://t.co/9QN3CP8vDS) to their victim list.#USA #BlackSuit #darkweb #databreach #cyberattack pic.twitter.com/YboNiknDxY

— FalconFeeds.io (@FalconFeedsio)

November 17, 2023

In December, the ransomware group also claimed that it infiltrated the network of Indiana-based DePauw University  and stole up to 214 GB of data from the University’s systems.

Cyber Threats