Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA) today disclosed that a cyberattack against the CPA Canada website allowed unauthorized third parties to access the personal information of over 329,000 members and other stakeholders.
CPA Canada is a national organization with more than 217,000 Chartered Professional Accountants as members and one of the largest national accounting bodies in the world.
The national accounting body was created by unifying three other Canadian accounting organizations: the Society of Management Accountants of Canada (CMA Canada), the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA), and the Certified General Accountants of Canada (CGA-Canada).
Affected individuals warned of phishing scams
After discovering the data breach at a yet undisclosed date, CPA Canada contained the incident by taking measures to secure the compromised systems and notified the affected individuals after identifying them.
"The information involved predominately relates to the distribution of the CPA Magazine and includes personal information such as names, addresses, email addresses and employer names," the breach notification reads.
The organizations says that passwords and full credit card numbers were also exposed in the incident but they were all "protected by encryption."
CPA Canada also contacted law enforcement agencies, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, as well as privacy authorities.
"Safeguarding the information in our care is one of our most important responsibilities and we sincerely regret any concern this incident may cause," CPA Canada President and CEO Joy Thomas said.
CPA Canada is also urging affected individuals not to fall victim to future phishing emails that could ask them to disclose sensitive information, click on links, or download ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
