The State Bar of California announced it is investigating a data breach of confidential attorney discipline it discovered had been posted online Thursday.

A public website that aggregates nationwide court case records was able to access and display limited case profile data on about 260,000 nonpublic state bar attorney discipline case records, along with about 60,000 public court case records, according to a news release from the state bar.

The State Bar announced Feb. 27 that as of late Saturday night, “it appears that all State Bar records, confidential and public, have been removed from the site, with a note confirming this on the site. We are continuing to investigate.”

Officials said the website also appears to display confidential court records from other jurisdictions.

State bar officials said they have taken several steps since the discovery, including notifying law enforcement, hiring a team of forensic experts to assist in the investigation, and asking the organization's case management software vendor to investigate. They said they also contacted the hosting company of the website that posted the confidential data to take down the information immediately, as direct contact information for the website owner was not readily available.

“We apologize to anyone who is affected by the website's unlawful display of nonpublic data,” said Leah Wilson, the bar association's executive director. “We take our obligations to protect confidential data with the utmost seriousness, and we are doing everything we can to ensure that we resolve this issue quickly and prevent any such breaches from recurring. We intend to act quickly to provide disclosures to affected individuals.”

The organization has set up a web page to provide ongoing updates and answer questions about the data breach.