Current and former employees of Paxton Media Group, the Kentucky-based media conglomerate which owns The Sanford Herald, received a letter over the weekend reporting that their names, addresses and other personal information had been revealed in a data breach.
The breach was reported Monday by Arkansas Business. In addition to Kentucky and North Carolina, Paxton also owns newspapers in Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
From the Arkansas Business report:
Current and former Paxton employees received a “notice of data privacy event,” and the hacking event was also reported to state consumer protection officials by Mullen Coughlin, a Pennsylvania law firm representing Paxton.
The notice said that Paxton Media Group, which brands itself as PMG, identified suspicious activity on its computer systems in March and opened an investigation that determined the company was the victim of a cyber attack that allowed “an unauthorized actor” to copy information from the system between Feb. 26 and March 20.
Four former Paxton employees who are now involved with The Rant confirmed receiving the letters, which offers a year of complimentary credit monitoring.