Southern Company Portal Breach Exposes Account Information of About 400,000 Customers
Summary
Southern Company says an unauthorized party accessed limited account information for about 400,000 utility customers through its online portal. The company stopped the activity, notified law enforcement and is offering affected customers one year of credit monitoring.
Key points
- About 300,000 affected accounts belong to Georgia Power customers and about 100,000 to Alabama Power customers; Mississippi Power is also named, but no count was provided.
- Information accessed may include names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, the last four Social Security number digits and basic account details.
- The company says bank account numbers, payment card numbers and driver’s license numbers were not accessed.
- Southern Company has not disclosed when the intrusion occurred or how the attacker gained portal access.
- The company says it stopped the activity, engaged law enforcement and is notifying affected customers by mail and email.
- Affected customers are being offered one year of free credit monitoring.
Article Details
- Victim Organization
- Southern Company
- Incident Type
- Unauthorized access to customer account information through the online customer portal
- Data Types Exposed
- Customer names
- Mailing addresses
- Phone numbers
- Email addresses
- Last four digits of Social Security Numbers
- Other basic account details
- Affected Records
- Approximately 400,000 customer accounts: roughly 300,000 Georgia Power accounts and roughly 100,000 Alabama Power accounts. Mississippi Power was also named as affected, but no customer figure was provided.
- Operational Impact
- Southern Company said it took immediate steps to stop the activity and engaged law enforcement. Affected customers are being notified by mail and email and offered one year of free credit monitoring.
- Claim Status
- confirmed