Data Breach Exposes Personal Data of 2.5 Million Student Loan Borrowers

EdFinancial and the Oklahoma Student Loan Authority (OSLA) are notifying over 2.5 million loanees that their personal data was exposed in a data breach. The target of the breach was Nelnet Servicing, the Lincoln, Neb.-based servicing system and web portal provider for OSLA and EdFinancial, according to a breach disclosure letter. Nelnet revealed the breach to affected loan recipients on July 21, 2022 via a letter.

[Our] cybersecurity team took immediate action to secure the information system, block the suspicious activity, fix the issue, and launched [sic] an investigation with third-party forensic experts to determine the nature and scope of the activity, according to the letter. By August 17th, the investigation determined that personal user information was accessed by an unauthorized party. That exposed information included names, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers for a total of 2,501,324 student loan account holders. Users' financial information was not exposed.