How many victims? 1,300.
What type of personal information? Names and Social Security numbers.
Details: Thieves stole the laptop of District Finance Director Dale Mellor. The spreadsheet was created as part of a requirement from a past district audit. The laptop was password-protected, but district officials are warning employees to be on the lookout for identity theft.
Mellor used the laptop to access the district’s financial database and direct-deposit system, which contains bank information for all employees in the district but is protected by a firewall.
What was the response? The district contacted all current employees, but about two-thirds of the individuals on the list no longer work in the district. Cunningham said the district plans to advertise and create a database to notify past employees of the breach.
Quote: “Ultimately with his computer, they could get into the network and cause havoc,” Superintendent Shalee Cunningham said. “(But) we don’t have any reason to believe they have a way to get into that.”
Source: https://www.steamboatpilot.com/, Steamboat Pilot & Today, “Stolen computer contained 1,300 Social Security numbers,” Feb. 25, 2009.