Energy minister seeks answers from Nova Scotia Power amid cybersecurity breach

Anjuli Patil · CBC News

· Posted: May 15, 2025 3:57 PM EDT | Last Updated: 4 minutes ago

Nova Scotia's vigor curate is seeking answers from Nova Scotia Power and the province's energy regulator is planning its ain probe into a cybersecurity breach astatine the inferior that resulted in customer accusation being accessed and taken.

In a missive to Nova Scotia Power president and CEO Peter Gregg dated May 7, Trevor Boudreau said helium wants to cognize what contiguous actions are being taken to enactment radical awaiting service. He also wants a guarantee customers won't look precocious penalties oregon disconnections until the issues are resolved.

"This incidental has raised important alarm implicit the extortion of lawsuit data, reliability of energy services and infrastructure," Boudreau's missive work successful part.

"I americium peculiarly troubled by the disruption this breach has caused to indispensable services, including delays successful powerfulness hook-ups and work connections for residents and businesses. These delays are not lone inconvenient but besides represent risks to health, information and economical stability, peculiarly for susceptible individuals and tiny businesses that trust connected uninterrupted electricity."

The Nova Scotia Energy Board, formerly known arsenic the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board, announced Thursday it will launch an investigation.

"The Nova Scotia Energy Board has opened a ceremonial proceeding to analyse the Nova Scotia Power cybersecurity incident. We are presently successful discussions with cybersecurity experts to prosecute them successful the matter," the committee said successful a connection connected its website.

While the committee said it recognizes the institution is "focused connected betterment and mitigation efforts," its process "is not intended to interfere with that captious work," the connection said.

"Our relation is to guarantee regulatory oversight and accountability portion allowing the inferior to ore connected restoring systems and supporting impacted customers. We instrumentality this substance precise earnestly and are committed to a thorough and transparent process," the committee said.

The scope of the board's investigation is inactive being defined. Some of the things that could beryllium covered see a reappraisal of the origin of the incident, Nova Scotia Power's reporting to authorities and its effect to the incident, and the interaction of the incidental connected ratepayers and to the inferior and its data.

In an update Wednesday, Nova Scotia Power said it has begun to notify customers whose information was compromised. The lawsuit accusation that could person been taken by an "unauthorized 3rd party" may have included addresses, telephone numbers, birthdates, driver's licence and societal security numbers, and banking information, the inferior said.

Nova Scotia Power said it is moving with cybersecurity experts to find the grade of the breach and to safely reconstruct and rebuild systems that were compromised. It besides arranged to person TransUnion supply affected individuals with a escaped two-year subscription to a recognition monitoring service.

To get the concern nether control, Nova Scotia Power has paused billing and unopen down its online lawsuit portal MyAccount.

No services person been disrupted arsenic a effect of the incident, the institution said, and precocious fees person been paused.

READ | Nova Scotia vigor minister's missive to NSP president: