MONTREAL (Reuters) – A June data breach that hit Canada’s Desjardins Group has affected all of the financial cooperative’s 4.2 million members, prompting government reforms to protect personal information in the Canadian province of Quebec, an official said on Friday.
Quebec Finance Minister Eric Girard said the province would take steps to improve cybersecurity and the protection of personal information in the wake of the data breach.
“It’s an extremely serious incident,” Girard told reporters in Quebec City.
“All of the members are affected.”
Quebec’s securities watchdog, the Autorité des marchés financiers, said on Friday that it had been advised by police that the leak was more significant than originally announced.
Montreal-based Desjardins said in June that unauthorized use of internal data by an employee led to breach of personal information, including social insurance number, address and details of banking habits. The breach was said to have exposed the information of 2.9 million members.
Girard said Desjardins is adequately managing the incident well, although he acknowledged there was a delay in discovering the data theft.
Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis
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