Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Recruiting Firm Apparently Pays Ransom After Being Targeted by Hackers

Administrative staffing agency Career Group, Inc. this week started sending notification letters to customers who were affected by a data breach that occurred in late June.

Administrative staffing agency Career Group, Inc. this week started sending notification letters to customers who were affected by a data breach that occurred in late June.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, the staffing and recruiting company provides both full-time and temporary placement services, in direct hire and freelance roles at organizations across all sectors.

The data breach, the company says, occurred between June 28 and July 7. The company detected “potential unauthorized access to its network” on July 2 and took the necessary steps to contain it.

The company also informed law enforcement of the incident and started an investigation that revealed unauthorized access to customer data.

“Our investigation determined that the unauthorized party potentially removed certain files and folders from portions of our network between June 28, 2021 and July 7, 2021,” the company says in the notification letter sent to affected individuals.

A redacted copy of the notification letter that was submitted to the Maine Attorney General’s Office shows that Career Group was able to identify the type of compromised information in early August, but does not reveal the exact type of data that was stolen.

However, the company did share with the Maine Attorney General’s Office the fact that names and other personally identifiable information, such as Social Security Numbers, were impacted. A total of 49,476 individuals were affected by the incident.

Career Group did not share details on the type of cyberattack it fell victim to, but it appears that ransomware might have been used and that the company likely paid a ransom to the attackers.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

“We received assurances from the unauthorized party that the data removed from our environment was permanently deleted and not further disseminated,” the company said in the notification letter.

The company also says it took the necessary steps to ensure that it would better protect the data entrusted to it.

Related: Nokia-Owned SAC Wireless Discloses Data Breach

Related: T-Mobile Confirms Data Breach Impacts Millions of Customers

Related: University of San Diego Health Says Personal Information Stolen in Data Breach

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.