Networking solutions provider Belden Inc. has been hacked and employee and company data stolen.

Described Tuesday by the company as a “data incident involving unauthorized access” and a “sophisticated attack by a party outside the company,” the data theft is said to involve the hackers gaining access to a limited number of company file services.

According to a statement from the company reported today by Security Week, the stolen data may have contained names, birthdates, government-issued identification numbers, bank account information, home addresses, email addresses and other employment information. The limited company information stolen is said to involve details of business partners, including bank account numbers and taxpayer I.D. numbers.

Belden has gone through the typical tick box of standard responses: activating its cybersecurity response plan, deploying teams of internet information technology specialists, hiring third-party forensic cybersecurity experts and informing regulatory officials and law enforcement.

“Safety is always paramount at Belden and we take threats to the privacy of personal and company information very seriously,” said Belden Chief Executive Roel Vestjens. “We regret any complications or inconvenience this incident may have caused and are offering assistance to those individuals who may have been impacted.” That assistance includes offering free credit monitoring services.

Exactly when the hack took place and what it involved was not shared by the company.

“A consistent theme in recent security breaches is that cybercriminals only need to find and exploit the weakest links in order to cause significant damage,” Chris Clements, vice president of solutions architecture at cybersecurity company Cerberus Cyber Sentinel Corp. told SiliconANGLE. “Poor password hygiene, employees falling victim to phishing or VPN appliances that aren’t included in the regular organization patch cadence are all low-hanging fruit for cybercriminals to target for exploitation.”

Clements said attackers thrive on those things that are missed or orphaned. “The only strategy to ensure that an organization stays as protected as possible is to adopt a culture of security that is first in the minds of all employee personnel from executive leadership to line of business operations,” he said.

The mention of VPN appliances that aren’t updated being targeted comes as a hacker has published a list of credentials for nearly 50,000 Fortinet Inc. FortiGate virtual private networking systems connected to the internet. In that case, hackers exploited a known vulnerability that has had a patch available since May 2019, but some users have not applied it.

Image: Belden