Breaking news: Western Digital hit by data breach, My Cloud backup services are down

Hard drive and cloud storage provider Western Digital says it has suffered a breach of security controls and data theft.

In a news release this morning the California company said that on Mar. 26 it identified a network security incident involving Western Digital’s systems. “In connection with the ongoing incident, an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of the company’s systems.”

The website for the company’s My Cloud Home backup service said it is experiencing a service outage impacting My Cloud, My Cloud Home, My Cloud Home Duo, My Cloud OS5, SanDisk ibi, and SanDisk Ixpand Wireless Charger products. That includes the ability to log in or email customer support.

“Upon discovery of the incident, the company implemented incident response efforts and initiated an investigation with the assistance of leading outside security and forensic experts,” the news release says. “This investigation is in its early stages and Western Digital is coordinating with law enforcement authorities.”

“The company is implementing proactive measures to secure its business operations including taking systems and services offline and will continue taking additional steps as appropriate,” the release says. “As part of its remediation efforts, Western Digital is actively working to restore impacted infrastructure and services. Based on the investigation to date, the company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data.”

Western Digital is one of the biggest storage manufacturers in the world, known for the Western Digital and SanDisk brand names for spinning and solid-state hard drives, portable drives, USB drives and storage media for digital cameras. It also offers the My Cloud family of personal network-attached storage devices and multi-purpose servers.

In January it announced second-quarter revenue of US$3.1 billion.