Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office alerts residents to data breach that exposed personal information
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office is warning residents of the commonwealth of a data breach that occurred earlier this year.
According to the office, residents' personal information, including social security numbers, may have been accessed during what they're calling a "cyber incident."
The incident happened in August when the office's website, email, and phones went offline.
They did say that while the breach happened, there's currently no evidence that the information has been misused.
Some of those affected by the breach were notified on Friday, and the attorney general's office has offered identity protection services. To find out if you were affected and for more information on the breach, head to this link.
Pennsylvania's summer 911 outage
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office said that the data breach was detected on August 9, just a couple of weeks after a 911 outage that impacted the entire commonwealth.
On July 12, Pennsylvanians attempting to call 911 experienced interruptions.
However, the outage in July was caused by a technical issue, not a cyberattack.
"As soon as the intermittent outages started, our vendors and partner public safety organizations began to investigate the cause and take steps to resolve the issue," said Jeff Boyle, PEMA's executive deputy director. "We activated the Emergency Alert System and issued Wireless Emergency Alerts as a precautionary measure to notify everyone in Pennsylvania of the issue and to follow county-based backup plans should they not be able to reach the 911 centers by calling the traditional three-digit phone number."
At the time of the outage, PEMA said that residents should make sure they have their county's non-emergency 911 line saved in their phones in the case of another outage.