Tri-Service
Thousands Of Navy Personnel Have Sensitive Data Stolen
The personal data of more than 130,000 US Navy sailors has been stolen.
The US Navy is investigating the theft which came after a laptop was compromised.
The laptop belonged to an employee of Hewlett Packard Enterprises who was working on a naval contract.
"Unknown individuals" managed to access the names and Social Security Numbers of 134,386 current and former sailors.
The Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Robert Burke said:
"The Navy takes this incident extremely seriously - this is a matter of trust for our Sailors. We are in the early stages of investigating and are working quickly to identify and take care of those affected by this breach."
Hewlett Packard Enterprise notified the Navy of the incident on October 27 but it was not until November 22 that it was determined the sensitive information had been accessed.
The Navy said it would inform those affected by the data breach in "the coming weeks" and added that there was no evidence to suggest the information had been misused.
It’s reported that the personal data came from the Career Waypoints database, know as C-Way, which sailors use to submit re-enlistment and Navy Occupational Specialty requests.
The US Navy has about 430,000 sailors on active duty or in ready reserve.
A spokesman for Hewlett Packard Enterprise told the BBC:
"This event has been reported to the Navy and because this is an ongoing investigation, HPE will not be commenting further out of respect for the privacy of our Navy personnel."
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