Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest asset managers, has confirmed that 77,000 customers had personal information compromised during an August data breach.
The Boston, Mass.-based investment firm said in a filing with Maine’s attorney general on Wednesday that an unnamed third party accessed information from its systems between August 17 and August 19 "using two customer accounts that they had recently established.”
“We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took steps to terminate the access,” Fidelity said in a letter sent to those affected, adding that the incident did not involve any access to customers’ Fidelity accounts.
Fidelity confirmed that a total of 77,099 customers were affected by the breach, and its completed review of the compromised data determined that customers' personal information was affected. It is not immediately clear how the creation of two Fidelity customer accounts allowed access to the data of thousands of other customers.
The financial giant hasn’t yet said what types of personal data were compromised, and no information about the breach was found on the company’s website at the time of writing.
When reached, Fidelity spokesperson Michael Aalto told TechCrunch that the incident did not involve access to Fidelity customers accounts "or funds." Fidelity declined to answer our specific questions about the incident.
According to Fidelity, the company has more than 51 million individual investors as customers, counting some $14.1 trillion in total customer assets as of June 2024.
Updated with response from Fidelity. Corrected fourth paragraph to note that the two Fidelity accounts were created, not breached; this was due to editor's error. ZW.