In April, Iberdrola USA, parents company of NYSEG, announced that a computer hacker had compromised the privacy of the company’s job applicants’ personal data. Now, a former Iberdrola executive has been arrested by the FBI. 40-year-old Annette Kendrick, who currently lives in Georgia, has been charged with a felony count of unauthorized use of a computer system to send damaging information. A criminal complaint was officially filed against her in the U.S. District Court in Rochester last month, and she was arrested and arraigned in Georgia on July 1st. Kendrick is a former human-resource executive who once worked in Rochester, and she allegedly snuck into the company computer system to discourage people who had applied for her old job. She left the company prior to this April. After discovering the intrusion into their system, Iberdrola issued a release stating it would notify the 5,100 applicants or hires whose personal information was at risk. The company also hired a forensic computer consultant to help track the intruder, and told the FBI it had spent up to $250,000 on the consultant, and says that there has been no evidence that any applicant’s personal information was misused during the mishap.
