US Transportation Department breach impacts 237K individuals

Reuters reports that the U.S. Department of Transportation had 114,000 current and 123,000 former employees' personal data compromised following a breach of systems involved in processing TRANServe transit benefits. Congress was informed by the department that the breach had been confined to some systems for employee transit benefits processing and other administrative functions. No transportation systems have been impacted by the incident but transit benefit system access has been frozen amid ongoing restoration and investigation efforts, said USDOT in a statement to Reuters. Such an incident comes after major data breaches impacting the federal government, with nine federal agencies having been breached in 2021 as a result of the widespread SolarWinds attacks linked to suspected Russian hackers, while the U.S. Office of Personal Management was hit by two separate breaches in 2014 and 2015, which impacted over 22 million individuals, including 4.2 million people who are working or have worked for the government.