77,000 clients exposed in Fidelity Investments data breach
One of the world’s largest asset management companies has revealed that the data of more than 77,000 of its clients was exposed in a data breach in August.
Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s top five asset management companies, disclosed in a breach notice to clients that a third party, using two client accounts it created, gained unauthorized access to some data stored on its network.
“Between August 17 and 19, a third party accessed and obtained certain information without authorization using two customer accounts they had recently established,” Fidelity told customers.
“We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took action to terminate access.”
Fidelity added that no customer accounts were accessed during the breach.
In a filing with Maine’s attorney general, the company confirmed that a total of 77,099 people were affected by the breach, with names or other personal identifiers accessed.
In a second data breach filing with the New Hampshire attorney general, Fidelity said access “was limited to [a] unique internal database” and that after a review of the data accessed, determined that the threat actor exfiltrated the data of “a small subset of Fidelity customers.”
In a third data breach filing with the Massachusetts attorney general, Fidelity said the stolen data included Social Security numbers and access to financial accounts.
In its advisory to customers, Fidelity said it has yet to identify cases where data accessed by threat actors was used maliciously.
“While we are not aware of any misuse of your personal information obtained due to this incident, we have arranged for you to enroll, at your option, in a credit monitoring and identity restoration service for 24 months at no cost to you.” , the company said.
Fidelity Investments is a leading asset management firm, managing $4.9 trillion in assets last year and reporting revenue of more than $28 billion. The company says it has more than 51 million individual investors as clients and manages $14.1 trillion in assets as of June this year. The company controls almost as much as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley combined, according to cyber news.
This is the second cyber incident the Fidelity Investments brand has suffered this year, as threat actors previously gained access to data belonging to its life insurance division.
