Portability Cyber Breach Raises Fears of Digital Pension Thieves

A breach of consumer data at one of the nation’s few retirement plan portability providers is raising concerns among some lawyers about the safety of offloading participant account balances and data to third-party firms.

Retirement Clearinghouse LLC announced the phishing attack last month, sending more than 10,500 letters to individual retirement account holders informing them that their names, Social Security numbers, and account IDs had been exposed.

As Congress and industry leaders modify 401(k) frameworks to better ensure workers’ benefits follow them from job to job, the latest breach is highlighting potential cyber vulnerabilities not only within the industry, but ...