Nearly a month after the cyber breach some government employees, past and present, still don’t know if their personal information has been compromised.
“I would say that it’s been a slow process getting notifications out to those members,” says Sandra Mullen, president of the Nova Scotia Government Employees Union.
The number is still changing but originally the province estimated as many as 100,000 Nova Scotians had their personal information stolen in the breach affecting the file transfer software called MOVEit.
The NSGEU is the largest in the province with 36,000 members. Mullen says people are still waiting to hear from the province’s Department of Cybersecurity and Digital Solutions.
“So far from what we’ve seen from the office that there have been almost 25,000 members of our, current and past members, that has been notified by letter that they have been impacted,” Mullen says.
Clop, the group claiming to be behind the attack, say they have deleted all the stolen data from governments, cities, and police services but are keeping information from private companies.
“The issue is all we have is their word and how good is the word of someone that is involved in theft,” says cybersecurity expert, Scott Beck. “There’s no way to know if they’ve actually deleted the data or not.”
Beck suggests people still monitor their accounts for unusual activity.
In an email from the office of the minister of Cybersecurity, they say nearly 24,500 letters have been sent to people who’s information was compromised, and that the Province is unaware of anyone who has been the victim of fraud, identify theft or other criminal activity as a result of the breach.
The NSGEU has been requesting a meeting with the province for a couple weeks now to discuss the cyber attack. Mullen says that meeting will happen Wednesday.
