Woman arrested in connection with Electric Ireland customer data breach

A woman has been arrested as part of an investigation into a potentially substantial Electric Ireland data breach last year.
Gardaí said the woman, who is aged in her 20s, was taken into custody on Monday and was being detained at a station in the Dublin metropolitan area.
In a statement on Tuesday, they said the arrest related to an incident at a national utility service provider.
“The potential breach was identified in 2023 by gardaí attached to the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau, who referred the matter to our colleagues in the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau for investigation,” it said.
“An Garda Síochána immediately contacted and continue to liaise with the affected utility company. Investigations are ongoing.”
Although gardaí did not specify the incident, in early November Electric Ireland issued a press release saying it was aware that an employee of a company working on its behalf may have inappropriately accessed a small proportion of 1.1 million residential customer accounts.
This, it said, had the potential for a misuse of personal and financial information.
“Our investigations have established that approximately 8,000 customer accounts may have been compromised,” it said at the time.