Air Canada has confirmed that it had experienced a security breach that allowed an unauthorized group limited access to the “personal information of some employees and certain records.”
The statement issued by the airline on Wednesday contained limited information on the extent of the breach or when it occurred, but it did emphasize that no customer information had been compromised in the incident.
“We can confirm that our flight operations systems and customer-facing systems were not affected," the airline said. “No customer information was accessed.”
Air Canada also reported that it promptly initiated measures to mitigate the breach’s impact, stating it has contacted the parties affected by the data leak and “relevant authorities.”
The airline’s systems have been thoroughly assessed, the statement added, and security enhancements have been implemented with the help of cybersecurity experts.
Air Canada confirmed the news of its breach following reports of a recent cyber attack that caused service disruptions in several Canadian airports.
According to cybersecurity news publication The Record, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirmed that a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack caused connectivity issues that impacted check-in kiosks and electronic gates at several airports last week.
At the same time, a pro-Russia hacking group claimed responsibility for a series of attacks targeting several Canadian government organizations, including CBSA and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.
Among the airports that experienced border checkpoint outages was the Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, according to The Record, citing a separate report by the French-language newspaper La Presse.
An earlier report from IBM found that the average cost of a cybersecurity breach in 2023 is $6.94 million. This figure is lower than the previous year’s average cost of $7.05 million, but it is also the second-highest annual cost reported by IBM since it began its yearly study nine years ago.
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