Tesla fires two employees for leaking the personal data of 75k employees to German media outlet

Ēlectric car manufacturing giant Tesla said it suffered a major data breach that compromised the sensitive personal information of more than 75,000 employees.

In a recent notice of data breach filed with the Office of the Attorney General of Maine, the electric car giant said that on May 10, German media outlet Handelsblatt informed it that it had obtained the company’s confidential data. Tesla immediately launched an internal investigation to understand the scope of the security incident.

“The investigation revealed that two former Tesla employees misappropriated the information in violation of Tesla’s IT security and data protection policies and shared it with the media outlet. The outlet has stated that it does not intend to publish the personal information,” the notice read.

The compromised information included the personal information of Tesla’s current and former employees such as their names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and more. The filing confirms that at least 75,735 Tesla employees have been affected by the security incident.

“Tesla immediately took steps to contain the incident, understand the scope, and protect your information. Among other things, we identified and filed lawsuits against the two former employees. These lawsuits resulted in the seizure of the former employees’ electronic devices that were believed to have contained the Tesla information.

“Tesla also obtained court orders that prohibit the former employees from further use, access, or dissemination of the data, subject to criminal penalties. Tesla cooperated with law enforcement and external forensics experts and will continue to take appropriate steps as necessary,” the company said.

While Tesla has no evidence of the compromised information being misused, the possibility of the same cannot be ruled out. The company is providing all affected individuals with a year of complimentary credit monitoring and identity theft service through Experian’s IdentityWorks. It has also promised to provide further training to all employees on responsible data handling practices.

In May, Handelsblatt reported that Tesla suffered a “massive” breach revealing everything from employees’ personal information to customer complaints about their cars. According to the publication, it received around 100GB of confidential data that contained more than 23,000 internal documents named “Tesla Files”.

Handelsblatt added that the data included employees’ personal data, customers’ bank details, production secrets, and customer complaints about Tesla’s Full Self Driving features. The media outlet also reported that the compromised data also included Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Social Security number.