Ceridian is dealing with its second major data beach in the past three year this week after the company discovered that someone managed to break into the payroll processor’s online system. eSecurity Planet details the scope of this latest security snafu and what the company is doing to prevent future breaches.
Payroll processing firm Ceridian this week is advising more than 1,900 customer companies that a hacker managed to access the company’s Internet payroll system in late December, potentially compromising the sensitive data of more than 27,000 workers.
Minneapolis-based Ceridian, which dealt with a similar breach of its Internet system in 2007, said this attack impacted less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the employees for whom it provides payroll services.
The data exposed included the employees’ names, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, bank account information and birth dates.
Ceridian officials said they immediately notified the FBI and local law enforcement once it discovered the breach and has begun to notify affected individuals.
“We took immediate preventive steps to ensure no further incident of this type would occur,” Keith Peterson, spokesman for Ceridian, said in a statement. “While the total number of employees affected is small, in our minds one is too many, and we are handling this incident according to our established protocol.”
