77,000 customers exposed in Fidelity Investments data breach
One of the world’s largest asset management firms has revealed that the data of more than 77,000 of its clients was exposed in a data breach in August.
Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s five largest asset management firms, revealed in a breach notification to its clients that a third party, using two client accounts it had created, gained unauthorized access. authorized to certain data stored on its network.
“Between August 17 and 19, a third party accessed and obtained certain information without authorization using two customer accounts it had recently created,” Fidelity told its customers.
“We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took action to terminate access.”
Fidelity added that no customer accounts were accessed during the breach.
In a filing with the Maine Attorney General, the company confirmed that a total of 77,099 people were affected by the breach, with names or other personal identifiers accessible.
In a second data breach filing with the New Hampshire Attorney General, Fidelity said access “was limited to [a] single internal database” and that after a review of the data accessed, it determined that the threat actor had exfiltrated data from “a small subset of Fidelity customers.”
In a third data breach filing with the Massachusetts attorney general, Fidelity said the stolen data included Social Security numbers and access to financial accounts.
In its customer advisory, Fidelity said it has not yet identified any instances in which data accessed by bad actors was used maliciously.
“While we are not aware of any misuse of your personal information obtained as a result of this incident, we have arranged for you to enroll, at your option, in a credit monitoring and restoration service identity for 24 months, at no cost to you,” the statement said. the company said.
Fidelity Investments is a major asset management firm, having managed $4.9 trillion in assets last year and reporting revenue of more than $28 billion. The company claims to have more than 51 million individual investors among its clients and manage $14.1 trillion in assets as of June this year. The company controls almost as much as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley combined, according to CyberNews.
This is the second this year that the Fidelity Investments brand has suffered a cyber incident, with malicious actors having already gained access to data belonging to its life insurance division.
