San Francisco, (Samajweekly) Two US-based major players in the aviation industry — American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have disclosed data breaches that have affected their pilot applicants.
According to BleepingComputer, the breaches occurred as a result of a hack targeting Pilot Credentials, a third-party vendor that manages pilot
applications and recruitment portals for numerous airlines.
On May 3, both airlines were notified of the Pilot Credentials incident, which was limited to the third-party vendor’s systems and had no impact or
compromise on the airlines’ own networks or systems.
Pilot Credentials’ systems were accessed by an unauthorised person on April 30 and documents containing applicant information were stolen.
A total of 5,745 pilots and applicants were affected, while Southwest reported 3,009 were affected, according to breach notifications filed with
Maine’s Office of the Attorney General, the report mentioned.
“Our investigation determined that the data involved contained some of your personal information, such as your name and Social Security number,
driver’s license number, passport number, date of birth, Airman Certificate number, and other government-issued identification number(s),” American
Airlines revealed.
Moreover, the report said that the airlines will direct all pilot and cadet applicants to self-managed internal portals from now on, even though no
evidence was found that their personal information was specifically targeted or exploited for fraud or identity theft.
“We are no longer utilising the vendor, and, moving forward, Pilot applicants are being directed to an internal portal managed by Southwest,”
Southwest Airlines said.
Meanwhile, PharMerica, a leading pharmacy service provider in the US, which operates in more than 2,500 facilities across the country and offers over
3,100 pharmacy and healthcare programmes, has disclosed a data breach that compromised the personal information of nearly six million patients.
