Residents of the city of Hamilton, ON have been informed that some of their personal information –their names, addresses, and roll numbers – may have been exposed after the municipality’s water billing service suffered a data breach.
The city recently issued an advisory saying that there was a potential leak of information through Alectra Utilities, which manages the water billing for the city.
Mayor Fred Eisenberger said in a statement that the city discovered the issue, then promptly alerted Alectra. He also said that the city will notify all affected customers and bill Alectra for the cost.
The exact number of Hamilton residents affected has yet to be determined. Alectra, however, handles water billing for about 150,000 customers on behalf of the city.
In a statement to CBC News, Alectra said that it is “working closely” with the city to “resolve the matter to their satisfaction.”
A spokesperson for the company also said that it is not aware of any information being compromised at this point.
Eisenberger said that the unauthorized access could be traced back to an offshore source. He explained that city programmers discovered that several of Alectra’s third party vendors may have access to information despite lacking security credentials.
The city offered a reminder that it has not yet confirmed that a privacy breach has occurred, or that the information leaked had been abused.
“This is kind of a precautionary forewarning,” Eisenberger remarked. “City staff is still trying to come to an understanding of who and how many. What we do know is what might have been released which is the municipal tax roll number, name and address. Very low-level stuff.”
CBC News reported that Hamilton has notified the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) of the incident; Alectra’s spokesperson has confirmed that the company will fully cooperate with the IPC’s investigation.
