Southern Company, the Atlanta-based energy holding giant, has confirmed that an unauthorized third party broke into its online customer portal and accessed account information belonging to roughly 400,000 customers across its electric subsidiaries, Georgia Power, Alabama Power, and Mississippi Power.
The company publicly disclosed the breach on October 5, 2026, stating that the intrusion, which occurred in September, was detected through its own monitoring systems. Upon discovery, Southern Company said it moved quickly to shut down the unauthorized access and notified law enforcement.
"Southern Company recently detected suspicious activity involving our online customer portal," the company said in a statement. "An unauthorized third party accessed certain, limited information about the accounts of approximately 400K customers. Upon detection, we took immediate steps to stop the activity and have engaged law enforcement."
Of the roughly 400,000 accounts compromised, approximately 300,000 belong to Georgia Power customers. Alabama Power accounts for the remaining 100,000, which represents about 6% of its 1.6 million-customer base. Mississippi Power was named in the company's public notice as affected, but Southern Company has not released a customer count for that subsidiary.
According to the company's published incident notice, the data the attacker accessed includes customers' names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, along with other unspecified basic account details. The company was clear about what was not taken: bank account numbers, payment card numbers, and driver's license numbers were not part of what the attacker pulled from the portal.
The online portal in question is the same platform customers use to pay bills and manage their accounts.
Despite the company's confirmation that it caught and stopped the intrusion, Southern Company has not said when exactly in September the breach occurred, nor has it explained how the attacker got past the portal's defenses in the first place. That absence of technical detail leaves open questions about the attack method, whether it involved stolen credentials, a software vulnerability, or some other approach.
Customers whose information was involved are being notified directly by both mail and email. Southern Company is also offering each affected customer one year of free credit monitoring through Equifax. Those with additional questions were directed to a dedicated assistance line at 1-800-900-6021, available Monday through Friday.
Southern Company, incorporated in 1945 and headquartered in Atlanta, is one of the largest energy holding companies in the United States. It supplies electricity through its subsidiaries to customers across three states and operates natural gas distribution businesses in four more. Its total customer base numbers over 9 million.
The incident sits alongside a string of recent cyberattacks targeting utility companies in North America and beyond. Just weeks earlier, in September 2026, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy disclosed that an unauthorized third party had obtained personal information on a portion of its customers through one of the company's external-facing systems. That disclosure came after a threat actor claimed on a cybercrime forum to have extracted 7.49 million customer records from the utility and ultimately leaked the data after the company failed to respond. In March 2025, Nova Scotia Power, Canada's largest electric utility in that province, suffered a cyberattack that disrupted its customer support line and web portal.
Research published by cybersecurity firm Trustwave in 2025 found that roughly 67% of credential access techniques used against energy and utilities companies involved brute force methods, which are largely automated attacks that cycle through large lists of usernames and passwords. That tactic, known as credential stuffing when it draws on passwords stolen from previous breaches on other platforms, has been used against utility customer portals before. In 2021, UK energy supplier Npower had to shut down its mobile app entirely after attackers used stolen credentials from other websites to access thousands of customer accounts.
The energy sector's digital attack surface has expanded considerably as utilities push more customer services online. Customers log into portals to check bills, set up autopay, and track usage, all of which requires storing personal data behind web-based logins. Security researchers have long pointed out that these portals often receive less security investment than back-end operational systems, even though they handle data that is directly useful for phishing, identity fraud, and social engineering.
Southern Company said it has found no evidence of ongoing unauthorized access following the breach, and noted that it continues to monitor its systems around the clock. The company's public notice also cautioned customers to be alert for fraudulent contact from individuals claiming to be Georgia Power or Alabama Power representatives, reminding them that neither utility will ever threaten immediate service disconnection or demand payment over the phone.
Anyone who believes they may have been affected and has not yet received notification from the company can contact Georgia Power customer service directly through the number listed on their bill.
