Blue Ridge Rural Water Company reveals major customer data breach

South Carolina-based Blue Ridge Rural Water Company said it experienced a data security incident that involved unauthorised actors gaining access to its customers’ sensitive personal information.

 

In a data breach notice filed with the Office of Maine Attorney General, the water supplier, which provides services in northern Greenville county in the state of South Carolina, said that on July 23, it identified suspicious activity in its internal network and immediately launched an investigation, with assistance from external cyber security experts, to determine the nature and scope of the incident.

 

It also took containment measures to mitigate the impact of the cyber attack, including taking affected systems offline and notifying relevant law enforcement about the same.

 

“The evidence showed that on July 23, 2024, an unauthorised actor viewed and obtained files stored on certain servers in our network. We conducted a careful review of the files and determined that one or more of the files contained some of your information,” Blue Ridge said in a letter to affected customers.

 

The compromised data included names and other personal identifiers along with Social Security numbers. The company is yet to share the number of affected individuals with the Maine state regulator.

 

“We wanted to notify you of this incident and to assure you that we take it seriously. To help prevent something like this from happening again, we have taken and are taking additional steps to further enhance our existing security measures,” Blue Ridge added.

 

While Blue Ridge Rural Water Company found no evidence of the compromised information being misused, it advised all affected individuals to regularly monitor their credit reports, account and benefit statements and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities, including the police and state attorney general.

 

It has also offered one year of complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring services through CyEx to all affected individuals.