Data breach impacts thousands of Virgin America employees
Virgin America has confirmed it suffered an internal data breach earlier this year which accessed the personal information of thousands of employees.
The airline said the records of approximately 3,230 employees and contractors were impacted, by gaining unauthorized access to login information and passwords.
Addresses, social security numbers, health information and details of government-issued IDs of 110 employees were also comprised.
Virgin didn’t say how they gained access to its corporate network.
The company discovered the breach on March 13, 2017.
"We immediately took steps to respond to the incident, including initiating our incident response protocol and taking measures to mitigate the impact to affected individuals," Alaska Air group vice president and legal and general counsel, Kyle Levine wrote in a letter to affected workers.
"We retained cybersecurity forensic experts to investigate the incident and reported the matter to law enforcement."
Canadian airline WestJet also warned of a data breach late last week.
It said data from WestJet Rewards member accounts was disclosed online but did not contain any credit card or financial information of members.
"The privacy and protection of our guests’ information is a matter we take very seriously and we have worked swiftly and aggressively to resolve this incident. WestJet is in the process of contacting affected guests and we deeply regret any inconvenience this may cause," said WestJet CIO Craig Maccubbin.
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