New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) and Rochester Gas and Electric (RG&E) today disclosed that they have suffered from a data breach, including unauthorized access to customer records which include customer names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and, in some cases, financial institution account numbers.
The two companies, which are subsidiaries of Iberdrola USA, today began sending notifications to customers advising them of the breach.
NYSEG serves 878,000 electricity customers and 261,000 natural gas customers across more than 40% of upstate New York. RG&E serves 367,000 electricity customers and 303,000 natural gas customers in a nine-county region centered on the City of Rochester. According to a statement, the incident involved an employee at a consulting firm contracted by NYSEG and RG&E who allowed unauthorized access to one of the companies’ customer information systems.
NYSEG and RG&E are in contact law enforcement, and are working with computer forensics experts to further investigate the incident.
“There is no evidence that any customer data has actually been misused, or that there was any malicious intent,” the statement added. That being said, the companies are offering an a year of credit monitoring free of charge, to help identify possible fraudulent activity.