More than 130,000 current and former sailors have fallen victim to a data breach, the Navy announced on Wednesday.
According to a news release, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services notified the Navy on Oct. 27 that one of the company’s laptops operated by an employee who was supporting a Navy contract had been breached. On Tuesday, an analysis by HP Enterprise Services and a Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation indicated personal information — including names and Social Security numbers — of 134,386 current and former sailors had been accessed by unknown individuals.
The Navy said they have not yet found any evidence of misuse of the sensitive information that was accessed.
“The Navy takes this incident extremely seriously. This is a matter of trust for our sailors,” said Vice Adm. Robert Burke, the chief of naval personnel. “We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by this breach.”
The sailors who are impacted by the breach will be notified in the coming weeks. The Navy also said it is working to “provide further details on what happened, and is reviewing credit monitoring service options for affected sailors.”
The Navy incident follows a data breach that targeted the Office of Personnel Management in 2014, when the personal data of 21.5 million people may have been stolen.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which separated from US computer firm HP last year, informed the Navy on 27 October about the laptop.