Update on Global Cybersecurity Breach Letters

The Province has now sent notification letters to all Nova Scotians whose sensitive personal information was stolen in the MOVEit global cybersecurity breach.

More than 165,000 letters have been mailed to people who were impacted.

“When we discovered the cybersecurity breach, our goal was to notify impacted Nova Scotians as quickly as possible so they could take steps to protect their identity. We’ve now finished that process,” said Cyber Security and Digital Solutions Minister Colton LeBlanc. “Now, we can turn our focus to setting out the lessons we’ve learned and ensuring departments are doing what they need to do to keep Nova Scotians’ personal information safe. We encourage all Nova Scotians to learn about and practise good cyber safety – use multi-factor authentication, update your browsers and don’t store your credit card information online.”

The Province offered five years of credit monitoring and fraud protection to people whose sensitive personal information was stolen.

The breach took place May 30-31, before the Province was aware of the global vulnerability of the MOVEit file transfer system.

Quick Facts:

• more than 118,000 letters with TransUnion credit monitoring codes have been sent to people whose sensitive personal information, such as social insurance numbers or banking information, was stolen in the breach
• just over 47,000 letters without credit monitoring codes have been sent to Nova Scotians who had less sensitive information stolen, which put them at lower risk of identity theft
• more than 29,000 people have signed up for credit monitoring
• the Province has paid $2.85 million for related credit monitoring services
• credit monitoring codes expire October 31 for those who have received them

Additional Resources:

Updates and information on the breach: https://novascotia.ca/privacy-breach/

More information on how to be cyber safe is available at: https://www.getcybersafe.gc.ca/en