Fortune 500 technology giant General Electric (GE) has revealed that the personal information of some employees may have been compromised due to a data breach suffered by Canon Business Process Services.
In a data breach notification submitted to the Office of the California Attorney General, the company explained that between February 3 - 14, 2020, an unauthorized party gained access to a Canon email account that contained documents of certain GE employees, former employees and beneficiaries entitled to benefits.
The compromised account contained direct deposit forms, driver’s licenses, passports, birth, marriage, and 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.
The documents obtained by the unauthorized party may have included names, addresses, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account numbers, passport numbers, dates of birth, and other information, the company said.
GE said its own systems were not affected by the Canon security breach, nevertheless, the tech giant is implementing appropriate measures to prevent such incidents in the future.