The Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has suffered a significant data breach that exposed the data of employees including addresses, Social Security numbers, and bank account information.
An INL press official confirmed to MeriTalk that the laboratory’s digital networks within its human resources department were affected, and exposed sensitive data.
“Idaho National Laboratory is continuing to investigate a cybersecurity data breach that occurred in a federally approved vendor system outside the lab that supports INL cloud Human Resources services. INL has taken immediate action to protect employee data,” said Lorie McNamara, a media spokesperson at the INL.
“INL has been in touch with Federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to investigate the extent of data impacted in this incident,” added McNamara.
A hacker group known as SiegedSec has claimed to be responsible for the attack leading to the data breach. INL declined to confirm the veracity of that claim.
“As the situation evolves more information will be shared,” stated McNamara.
