The UK Electoral Commission has revealed a significant data breach that exposed the personal details of individuals who registered to vote in the UK between 2014 and 2022. Acronis Advanced Data Loss Prevention monitors access to your data and helps to prevent any data exfiltration
1. UK Electoral Commission Data Breach Exposes 8 Years of Voter Data
The UK Electoral Commission has revealed a significant data breach that exposed the personal details of individuals who registered to vote in the UK between 2014 and 2022. The disclosure has come ten months after the initial detection of the breach and two years after the breach itself occurred, prompting concerns about the delayed public reporting.
The attackers accessed the Commission’s servers, which housed its email, control systems, and electoral register copies. Although the breach did not compromise the personal information of anonymously registered individuals, it did impact those who registered conventionally. The exposed data includes names, email addresses, home addresses, contact telephone numbers, email content, and personal images sent to the Commission. Information from the Electoral Register entries, such as names, addresses, and birthdates, was also compromised.
The Commission stated that the breach did not affect elections or voter registrations, and tried to minimize the incident by claiming that a substantial portion of the exposed information was already in the public domain.
Acronis Advanced Data Loss Prevention monitors access to your data and helps to prevent any data exfiltration.