U.S. notified 3,000 companies in 2013 about cyberattacks

Ellen Nakashima reports:

Federal agents notified more than 3,000 U.S. companies last year that their computer systems had been hacked, White House officials have told industry executives, marking the first time the government has revealed how often it tipped off the private sector to cyberintrusions.

The alerts went to firms large and small, from local banks to major defense contractors to national retailers such as Target, which suffered a breach last fall that led to the theft of tens of millions of Americans’ credit card and personal data, according to government and industry officials.

Read more on the Washington Post.

It would be nice to know how many of those 3,000 cases involved breaches of personal information databases as opposed to trade secrets or intellectual property, but it’s good that the government is sharing what it has learned with targeted entities.