The City of Canton in the US state of Ohio said that the data security incident it suffered earlier this year compromised the sensitive personal information of close to 270,000 individuals.
In a notice of data breach filed with the Office of Maine Attorney General, the City administration said that on July 25, it became aware of suspicious activity involving a user account in its internal network. City officials immediately launched an investigation, with assistance from external cyber security experts, to determine the nature and scope of the incident.
The City also took steps to secure the affected network and notified relevant law enforcement authorities about the incident.
“The City’s investigation has determined that, while no internal systems were compromised, certain data was potentially accessed and acquired by a third party not authorised to do so,” reads the notice.
The compromised data included names, driver’s license numbers, and addresses. City officials have, however, clarified that they have found no evidence of social security numbers and financial information being accessed by the threat actor.
The City’s regulatory filing with the Maine state regulator also revealed that at least 269,276 individuals were impacted by the incident.
“Upon detecting this incident, we moved quickly to initiate an investigation to remediate the incident and confirm the security of our environment. We take the protection and proper use of personal information very seriously and plan to enhance the security of our systems moving forward in an effort to prevent any further similar incidents,” city officials said.
The City added that it found no evidence of the compromised information being misused, but advised all affected individuals to regularly monitor their credit reports, account and benefit statements and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities, including the police and state attorney general.
The City of Canton has also offered one year of complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring services through TransUnion to all affected individuals.
City officials are yet to share details on who is behind the cyber attack, nor has any threat actor or group claimed responsibility for the data security incident at the time of publication.
