Interim Update on FOIPOP Portal Privacy Breach

Work is progressing on addressing the privacy breach of government’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) website.

To date the province has:

• secured the services of Trans Union, one of Canada’s leading credit reporting agencies. These services will be provided free of charge for a year to the 323 Nova Scotians who had sensitive personal information accessed
• continued testing of the FOIPOP website to ensure it is secure and works properly before it goes back online. Vendor testing continues and a third-party has been contracted by government to do further testing
• continued investigating the breach and determined 11 other instances of unusual activity. These instances did not involve new information and no additional Nova Scotians were impacted.

The 11 additional instances of unusual activity involved the download of almost 900 of the same documents accessed in the breach previously reported on April 11.

The province is notifying 53 people who had sensitive personal information accessed. This could include information such as birthdates, social insurance numbers and addresses. These individuals were impacted and already notified as part of the previously reported breach and are being notified again.

Information on all unusual activity has been provided to police to be considered as part of their investigation. The Nova Scotia Auditor General Michael Pickup and the Information and Privacy Commissioner Catherine Tully are also investigating.

“There are multiple ongoing investigations and our main goal is to help support Nova Scotians in keeping their private and personal information secure,” said Minister of Internal Services Patricia Arab. “We’re co-operating with police and will work closely with both the Auditor General and the Information and Privacy Commissioner to assist them with their investigations. We want to make this right and we want Nova Scotians to once again have confidence that their information is secure.”