Supplier Data Breach Impacts Significant Number of Dollar Tree Employees
- Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
American discount retail chains Dollar Tree and Family Dollar have recently fallen victim to supply-chain attacks. The workforce analytics solution provider for the companies, Zeroed-In Technologies, experienced a security incident, leading to the unauthorized access and exfiltration of data from nearly 2 million individuals.
In a breach notification published with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, software company Zeroed-In Technologies, revealed that the incident impacted a total of 1,977,486 individuals.
According to the company’s notice to affected people, unauthorized threat actors gained access to its network between August 7-8, 2023, and accessed staff details of certain clients. Information about Dollar Tree’s current and former employees was also a part of this breach. As per the notice, in Maine, 7,034 employees of the company were impacted.
The company is yet to confirm the names of its other customers who were impacted by this security breach.
‘While the investigation was able to determine that these systems were accessed, it was not able to confirm all of the specific files that were accessed or taken by the unauthorized actor,” the notice read. ‘’Therefore, Zeroed-In conducted a review of the contents of the systems to determine what information was present at the time of the incident, to whom the information relates, and to which Zeroed-In customers the information belonged,’’ it continued.
The investigation revealed that the compromised information included names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers (SSNs), of affected clients’ employees.
After the investigation, Zeroed-In not only notified the federal law enforcement agency, but also sent out individual written notices to impacted customers and individuals. Through TransUnion, it’s also offering free credit monitoring services for twelve months to impacted people.
Despite Zeroed-In’s effort to contain the impact of this incident, the scale of this breach has raised interest of law firms looking at filing potential class-action lawsuits against it.
Virginia-headquartered Dollar Tree and Family Dollar operates more than 16,000 stores across 48 states in the US and 5 Canadian provinces.
Ardent Suffers Network Outages Due to Disruptive Ransomware Attack
- Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
After discovering the incident , the company’s technology team immediately took its network offline and suspended user access to all applications, including corporate servers, Epic software, internet and clinical programs.
Additionally, law enforcement was informed, and third-party forensic and cybersecurity services were engaged to investigate the incident and its impact.
While the full extent of the compromised patient health or financial data is yet to be confirmed, Ardent continues with its investigation and system restoration measures.
‘’At this time, Ardent cannot confirm the extent of any patient health or financial data that has been compromised. Ardent is still determining the full impact of this event and it is too soon to know how long this will take or what data may be involved in this incident,’’ the update read .
״Ardent teams are working around the clock to bring our systems back online and to establish a timeline for returning all applications to fully operational. At this time, we do not have a firm timeline for restoring full access,’’ the update continued.
Despite the temporary disruption in certain aspects of its clinical and financial operations, Ardent continues to provide patient care safely in its hospitals, emergency rooms, and clinics.
To ensure timely delivery of urgent patient care, as a precautionary move, the healthcare provider has decided to reschedule some non-urgent, elective procedures. Impacted hospitals are redirecting emergency care patients to nearby hospitals, until the systems are fully restored.
The organization also assured patients that in case of a rescheduled appointment or procedure, they would be directly contacted by Ardent’s team.
