Coca-Cola announced a data breach last week after a former employee was found to have other employees' information on his personal hard drive. The company was notified of the breach last September.
The incident affects 8,000 employees.
Coca Cola says it has been conducting an investigation in recent months in collaboration with authorities to uncover the validity and origin of the data, and confirms that the list contains personal information of its employees. Following local laws, as it is required to do, the company is issuing data breach notices and sending them to the employees whose information has been leaked.
“We are issuing data breach notifications for approximately 8,000 individuals whose personal information was included in files that a former employee took with him when he left the company,” a Coca-Cola spokesperson said, adding that different types of data have been leaked for each employee.
“We take the security of the information we hold about our employees very seriously and we regret this breach and any concerns or inconvenience we may have caused. After months of investigation, we have no evidence to suggest that the leaked information has been used in a malicious manner.”
Coca-Cola will provide free identity monitoring services to those affected to detect "strange or malicious" movements in cyberspace, through a third-party company.
The reason why it took so long for the company to make any relevant announcement regarding the breach is because local authorities requested it, until there were some results from the investigation they conducted.
