Mass personal data breach impacted more than 5,000 city employees

There was a mass data beach in May 2021 involving thousands of City of Edmonton employees.

That’s according to a statement from Open City and Technology (OTC).

Daryl Croft, the branch manager of OTC, says in 2021 a former employee accessed city records without authorization. The data was then uploaded to that former employee’s personal cloud storage.

The City’s Corporate Access and Privacy Office (Office of the City Clerk) was reportedly notified as soon as the breach was discovered.

“Given the size of the breach, the City hired an outside forensic IT consulting firm, which was able to access the cloud account and identify more than 157,000 records that could belong to the City,” said Croft. “We have no reason to believe the records were shared beyond the employee, who is no longer employed by the City of Edmonton.”

The 2021 breach reportedly included employee names, payroll roll numbers, performance management information and some information on employees that were temporarily laid off.

“The Corporate Access and Privacy Office has spent months reviewing records to identify employees whose personal information may have been compromised,” said Croft.

“Due to the number of records, the CAP team has not been able to look at every record. We do know that private information of more than 5,000 employees was identified in the months-long records review.”

All city employees have reportedly been informed of the data breach and that personal information may have been compromised.