Breach, Data Security

Document posted to California city website, employee data accessed

In California, the City of Encinitas and San Dieguito Water District is notifying 615 current and former employees that a California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) payment document containing their personal information – including Social Security numbers – was inadvertently made public on the City's website for about seven weeks, and was accessed by 16 people.

How many victims? 615, a city spokesperson told SCMagazine.com on Wednesday. 

What type of personal information? Names and Social Security numbers.

What happened? A CalPERS payment document containing the employee information was inadvertently made public on the City of Encinitas website, and was accessed by 16 people.

What was the response? The document was removed and is no longer accessible. All impacted individuals are being notified, and offered a year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services.

Details: The document was publically accessible from about May 13 to about July 3, and was accessed by 16 people. The following staffers were impacted if enrolled in CalPERS between certain timeframes: the City of Encinitas between July 1993 and October 2013, the City of Encinitas Fire Safety/Fire Protection District between July 1986 and October 2011, and the San Dieguito Water District between July 1989 and October 2011. Two notification documents were filed, one for living and one for deceased.

Quote: “We have taken necessary steps to improve our processes and systems to prevent this from happening again,” Gus Vina, city manager, wrote in the notification.

Source: oag.ca.gov, “City of Encinitas – Notice Letter,” July 11, 2014.

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