Tracy Vedder reports from Seattle: Thousands of people are now vulnerable to identity theft, and it’s all because of a stolen laptop. The information, which includes Social Security and drivers license numbers, was on a King County sheriff’s office computer that was stolen from a detective. The laptop and a personal hard drive were full…
Category: Government Sector
FL: Teacher preparation data exposed online
Travis Pillow reports: Florida’s Education Commissioner is ordering a review of the state’s data security procedures after personal information for thousands of teachers-in-training was exposed on the Internet. The state Department of Education announced Saturday that personal information for about 47,000 participants in state teacher preparation programs was publicly available on the Internet for two…
ADP “software code error” exposes Houston govt. employees’ info online
Cindy George reports: Technical issues encountered by the city of Houston’s payroll contractor could have potentially exposed personal information for nearly 5,000 local government workers, including more than 1,000 in the Houston Police Department. Widespread notice about the compromised data emerged on Wednesday when the Houston Police Officers’ Union posted a notice to members on its…
Lawmakers seek credit monitoring for veterans
Kevin Freking of Associated Press reports: A bipartisan group of lawmakers asked the Veterans Affairs Department on Friday to offer credit monitoring to veterans and dependents whose personal information, including birth dates and Social Security numbers, might have been disclosed when its computer systems were hacked. The lawmakers are responding to testimony at a hearing where witnesses said foreign-sponsored…
GSA responds to FOI request
On March 17, I noted that the General Services Administration (GSA) had disclosed a vulnerability in the System for Award Management (SAM), which could allow some existing users in the system to view certain registration information of other users. The data contained identifying information including names, taxpayer identification numbers (TINs), marketing partner information numbers and bank…
NY: Town of Brookhaven data breach ‘was clerical error,’ officials say
Deon J. Hampton reports: Brookhaven Supervisor Edward P. Romaine on Thursday handed off an investigation into the inadvertent online posting of personal information to the town’s law department — the same unit that made the mistake. […] Town officials did not release the name of the employee who mistakenly made public the Social Security numbers…