York County, South Carolina, is now alerting those who applied for a job within its government or are registered as official vendors with the county that their information may have been compromised in a
data breach.
An unauthorized person gained access to a York County web application server nine months ago, and while officials say they have no reason to believe any of personal data was accessed by that hacker, it is possible, according to a report from the
Charlotte Observer. The breach, which affects 16,981 potential victims, was first observed on August 29, 2011, and exposed applicants' names, Social Security numbers, and other details.
"[G]iven the nature of the intrusion, it didn’t appear to anybody that there was a likelihood that anyone had used any of the data in the files," county manager Jim Baker told the newspaper.
Ondrej Krehel, chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, has a blog about the ways a data breach can affect consumers, and what they can do to mitigate the associated risks.
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