Southern Company breach exposes 400,000 utility accounts
Southern Company is notifying roughly 400,000 customers that an unauthorized third party accessed their utility account information through the company's online customer portal.
The Atlanta-based energy holding company operates electric utilities in three US states and natural gas distribution businesses in four, serving more than 9 million customers in total. Its electric subsidiaries are Georgia Power, Alabama Power and Mississippi Power.
Most affected accounts belong to Georgia Power
Georgia Power customers account for the largest share of the incident, with about 300,000 accounts affected. Southern Company says another 100,000 or so belong to Alabama Power, which has 1.6 million accounts in total.