Rhode Island Urges Residents to Protect Personal Information Amid Data Breach

Rhode Island is urging the state’s residents to protect their personal information amid a data breach of RIBridges, a system that handles many of the state’s social services programs.

The state’s vendor, Deloitte, told Rhode Island that there is a “high probability” that a cybercriminal obtained personally identifiable information from the system, according to the state’s RIBridges Alert page, which provides updates on the incident.

“Right now, the most important thing for potentially impacted Rhode Islanders to do is protect your personal information,” Gov. Dan McKee said in a Monday (Dec. 16) press release. “Freezing your credit, contacting the credit bureaus, setting up multiple levels of security and staying alert will help keep your identity safe.”

On Sunday (Dec. 15), Deloitte contracted with Experian to run a multilingual call center that can provide general information about the data breach and the steps customers can take to protect their data, according to a Sunday press release.

The release added that, “to the best of our knowledge, any individual who has received or applied for health coverage and/or health and human services programs or benefits could be impacted by this breach.”

Rhode Island learned of a potential cyberattack on the system from Deloitte Dec. 5 and learned over the following week that there had been a breach, that there was a high probability that personally identifiable information had been taken, and that there was malicious code in the system, according to a Saturday (Dec. 14) press release. On Friday (Dec. 13), it took the RIBridges system offline.

The state said in the release that it didn’t announce the breach for security reasons until it had secured the system.

With the system offline, Rhode Islanders cannot log into their account through the portal or the mobile app — they have to submit a paper application to apply for benefits, per the release.

“While the analysis of the breach is still underway, unfortunately, Deloitte has indicated that the information involved may include names, addresses, dates of birth and Social Security numbers, as well as certain banking information, but is still assessing the situation,” the release said.

Rising scam threats have forced banks to innovate their fraud prevention strategies, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence report “The State of Fraud and Financial Crime in the U.S. 2024: What FIs Need to Know.”

The report found that 40% of financial institutions said their fraud-related dollar losses grew in the previous 12 months.