This week, reports surfaced that the Small Business Association’s COVID-19 loan program experienced an unintentional data breach last month, leaving the personal information of up to 8,000 applicants temporarily exposed. This is just the latest in a long line of COVID-19 cyber-attacks and exposures since the pandemic began.
The effected program is the SBA’s long-standing Economic Injury Disaster Loan program (EIDL), which congress recently expanded to help small businesses effected by the COVID-19 crisis. The EIDL is separate from the new Paycheck Protection Program, which is also run by the SBA.
According to a letter sent to affected applicants, on March 25th the SBA discovered that the application system exposed personal information to other applicants using the system. The information potentially exposed include names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, email addresses, citizenship status, insurance information, and even social security numbers of applicants
According to the SBA, upon discovering the issues they “immediately disabled the impacted portion of the website, addressed the issue, and relaunched the application portal.” All businesses affected by the COVID-19 loan program breach were eventually notified by the SBA and offered a year of free credit monitoring.
A number of recent examples show that the severe economic impact of the pandemic has left the SBA scrambling. Typically, the SBA is meant to issue funds within three days of receiving an application. However, with more than 3 million applications flooding in, some have had to wait weeks for relief.
The unprecedented number of applications filed, coupled with the fact the SBA is smallest major federal agency — suffering a 11% funding cut in the last budget proposal — likely contributed to the accidental exposure of applicant data. However, whether accidental or not, a data breach is still a data breach. It’s important that all organizations take the time to ensure their systems and data remain secure, and that mistakes do not lead to more work and confusing during a time of crisis.