4 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Aug 12, 2026 09:03 AM IST
HCL Technologies has responded to a hacker group’s claim that it has accessed the Indian IT services company’s employee data.
The allegedly stolen data may be limited and dated to a few years back, the company said in an exchange filing on Monday, August 10. However, HCLTech denied that there has been a breach of its internal systems and further clarified that it has not found any evidence of its client engagement systems being compromised.
In a post on a dark web forum, a threat actor claimed to be selling an HCLTech dataset comprising details of over 2,50,000 employees such as their full names, email addresses, job titles, departments, phone numbers, physical addresses, and employee and service account records. The hacker further claimed that the purported employee dataset was obtained from a Microsoft Azure Tenant – a dedicated instance of Azure’s cloud services tied to a single organisation – using compromised credentials.
Note, the authenticity of the alleged data dump and the threat actor’s claims have not been independently verified by The Indian Express. The claims were first reported by Intel and Breaches, an X handle that monitors the dark web for such activity.
“In this regard this is to clarify that the Company’s initial investigation has revealed that the aforesaid data may be limited and dated to a few years back. There is no evidence of breach to the Company’s systems or engagement with any of the Company’s clients,” HCLTech said.
“The company, however, is undertaking further investigation, and any material findings in this regard will be reported,” it added.
HCLTech’s response to the alleged data breach comes on the heels of a similar disclosure from IT rival Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Last month, one of India’s largest public sector banks, Bank of Baroda, also confirmed a security incident that led to unauthorised access to “certain data” by threat actors. The incident involved hacking into an employee’s email account, the lender said.
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These incidents further highlight growing cybersecurity concerns over increasingly capable AI agents that can automate sophisticated cyber attacks from start to finish. In response, large enterprises are stepping up hiring across cloud security, AI security, and threat intelligence as they look to bolster their defences against such evolving threats.
TCS flags exposure of employee data
TCS on Monday said it has received alerts alleging that the possible exposure of certain employee-related data, adding that there was no indication that customer data or systems have been impacted.
The information referenced in the alerts appears to be over-four-year old and limited to basic employee information, TCS said in a statement, without offering further details including who has issued the alerts and when.
TCS said it has had safeguards in place for over two years against the manner in which this attack was carried out. Its own operational systems have not been impacted, the IT firm said. “Based on the current review, these controls remain effective, and the company continues to monitor the environment closely,” it said.
