Notification of Cybersecurity Incident

Bentley & Co. Ltd. (“Bentley”) works hard to protect the privacy of our customers and employees. Unfortunately, we recently experienced a cybersecurity incident that may have implications for current and former employees of Bentley and Bentley’s former business, Bentley Leathers Inc., including its subsidiary and affiliated companies Continental, Inglot and Access (collectively, “Bentley Leathers”).

What Happened?

On October 23, 2023, we detected unauthorized access to our information technology infrastructure. We took immediate action to secure our systems and engaged third-party experts to assist with a forensic investigation to understand the nature and extent of the incident.

The forensic investigation into this incident is ongoing. However, we have determined that certain types of personal information were compromised as a result of the incident.

This page provides further information for potentially affected individuals.

Customers

Customers can rest assured that Bentley only collects and stores masked customer payment information and limited customer contact information used for the purposes of exchanges and/or returns. The company’s retail website was not affected by the incident.

Current and Former Employees of Bentley

Those employed by Bentley & CO LTD have already been notified of the incident by email or mail where we didn’t have a current email address on file. If you were employed by Bentley on or after 2019 and have not yet received an email or letter from us, please contact us at security@bentleygroup.com..

Former Employees of Bentley Leathers

If you were employed prior to 2019 by our former business, Bentley Leathers, some of your personal information has also been impacted by the incident. We are doing our best to directly notify former Bentley Leathers employees about this incident where we have current contact information on file. Nonetheless, we are notifying all former Bentley Leathers employees about this incident with this notice.

As an employer, we collected a range of personal information to manage your employment with Bentley Leathers. Our investigation has determined that the following types of employee personal information were compromised in the Incident:

  • Name and contact information, including mailing address, email address and/or phone number.
  • Social Insurance Number
  • Direct deposit information
  • Birth date and/or gender
  • Title/role, salary information, bonus information, hire date, employee number, employee photo, and/or immigration forms.
  • Emergency contact information and/or family members’ information collected for benefit providers.

Please note that this list represents all types of information potentially impacted by the incident. Not all types of personal information were impacted for every individual. We are proactively providing you with this information so that you can take steps to protect your personal information, as set out below. We want to assure you that, to date, we are not aware of any personal information being misused.

We recognize this news may be concerning, and we would like to offer all potentially affected former employees a complimentary subscription for identity theft and credit monitoring services. For more information about this incident and to access your complimentary credit monitoring subscription, please contact our dedicated call centre at 1-833-972-2392.

Upon completion of the online activation process, you will have access to the following features:

  • Unlimited online access to the TransUnion Canada credit report, updated daily. A credit report is a snapshot of your financial history and one of the primary tools leveraged for determining credit-related identity theft or fraud.
  • Unlimited online access to the CreditVision® Risk score, with score factors and analysis updated daily. A credit score is a three-digit number calculated based on the information contained in your TransUnion Canada credit report at a particular point in time.
  • Credit monitoring alerts, with email notifications to key changes on your TransUnion Canada credit report. In today’s virtual world, credit alerts are a powerful tool to help protect you against identity theft, enable quick action against potentially fraudulent activity, and provide you with additional reassurance.
  • Unlimited access to online educational resources concerning credit management, fraud victim assistance and identity theft prevention.
  • Dark Web Monitoring to provide monitoring of surface, social, deep, and dark websites for potentially exposed personal, identity and financial information in order to help protect you against identity theft.

We have implemented enhanced security measures to further prevent an incident of this nature from reoccurring in the future. We also reported this incident to law enforcement and applicable privacy regulators.

In addition to enrolling in your complimentary credit monitoring service, we encourage you to remain vigilant to mitigate against threats of identity theft or fraud with the following best practices:

  • Change your passwords regularly and make sure they are secure, especially when an account is linked to your social insurance number. Do not use the same passwords for your work and personal accounts.
  • Be careful when sharing your personal information unsolicited, whether by phone, email or on a website.
  • Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments in suspicious emails.

The following website offers additional tips and resources to help you protect your identity: Identity theft and you – Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

For more information

For more information about this incident and to access your complimentary credit monitoring subscription, please contact our dedicated call centre at 1-833-972-2392. You will be asked to provide your name, location of employment, and approximate dates of employment to verify your identity and to access the subscription.

We sincerely regret any inconvenience this incident may have caused and appreciate your understanding.