American education technology company Chegg this week sent notifications to its employees to inform them of a data breach that occurred earlier this month.
Based in Santa Clara, California, Chegg offers various student services, including digital and physical textbook rentals and online tutoring, and has more than three million subscribers.
On April 28, the company started sending notifications to its employees, to inform them that a security incident on its network impacted some of their personal information.
The company says that it learned of the data breach on April 10, 2020, and that the information of both current and former employees might have been exfiltrated in the incident.
“On April 10, 2020, we learned that, on or about April 9, 2020, an outside hacker may have illegally obtained employee information for approximately 700 current and former U.S. Chegg employees,” the notification, which was published on the California Attorney General’s website, reads (PDF).
Chegg says the intruders were able to access personally identifiable information (PII) such as employee names and social security numbers. However, it does not mention any other type of information being compromised.
The company has already launched an investigation into the incident and says it is working with a third-party forensic firm. Law enforcement was also notified.
“We believe that your information may have been obtained, which is why you are receiving this notice,” the company says in the notification.
Chegg notes that it is also determined to reinforce the safeguards that it had in place prior to the incident to protect employee information.
It’s yet unclear how the attackers were able to compromise Chegg’s network or whether the incident is in any way related to the two previous data breaches that the company reported over the past couple of years.
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