The Seattle Housing Authority was hit by a data breach late last year, with affected tenants receiving word in just the last 10 days.
The SHA confirmed the breach with KIRO 7 on Friday, describing it as “an incident where our service had been accessed.” That included personal information for an unspecified number of employees and tenants working for and with the organization.
According to the SHA, the data breach occurred in October of 2023.
“We immediately took measures to contain the incident, notified federal law enforcement and launched an investigation with the assistance of cyber incident response specialists to determine the full nature and scope of the event,” SHA Communications Director Kerry Coughlin said.
By the next month, it became clear that tenant information had potentially been accessed. The most recent notifications were sent out to tenants on Jan. 16.
As for why it took months to send out those notices, the SHA explained that it took time to work with a cybersecurity firm to comb through data and determine who exactly might have been affected.