Coast Guard Reserve reports data breach
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The Coast Guard Reserve is informing its personnel of a significant data breach that occurred in January 2024, impacting the privacy of 10,700 members.
This breach involved the unauthorized distribution of personally identifiable information (PII) to several unapproved recipients. Per the details of the remediation, it seems that the breach was caused by sending of a spreadsheet with multiple tabs, where some of the tabs contained detailed PII which was not supposed to be sent.
The recipients of the data notified the Coast Guard's privacy office, which then undertook an investigation to understand the full extent of the exposure before informing those impacted. The affected members were only notified by April 18.
The Coast Guard has advised all affected personnel to remain vigilant by monitoring their credit reports and placing fraud alerts on their files to protect against potential identity theft. No instances of fraud related to this breach have been reported to date.
