BreachExchange mailing list archives
Accountant firm reports stolen laptop - four clients involved
From: rchick <rchicker () etiolated org>
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:26:08 -0400
April 24, 2008 http://www.theworldlink.com/articles/2008/04/24/news/doc4810bce97af34074884341.txt NORTH BEND - The theft of a laptop computer owned by a local accounting firm has made nearly 500 employees of Coos County and private organizations concerned about identity theft. County officials worry the data may have contained employees' names, Social Security numbers and other personal information, which had been used in recent audits performed by Hough, MacAdam & Wartnik LLC of North Bend. Although, there have been no known reports of identity theft from any of the 482 employees notified, the computer has not been found and, according to a letter from the firm, thieves sometimes hold victims' information for later use. According to a Coos Bay Police press log, at approximately 7:28 a.m. on March 5, officers received a report of a woman flagging down Officer Tony Wetmore, identified as 122 in the log, near Coos Bay City Hall. Crystal Albiar, 30, told Wetmore a laptop computer had been stolen from a vehicle, which, Wetmore said, belonged to Albiar. The victim is listed on the press log as Hough, MacAdam & Wartnik, Albiar is a senior accountant at the firm. Later that day, a letter from the company was sent to clients stating that a "serious data security incident" may have involved clients' personal information. "During the night of Tuesday, March 4, 2008, a notebook computer was stolen from a locked vehicle. The notebook's hard drive may have contained your name, Social Security number, and other personal information," the letter stated. "We have notified law enforcement about this incident. This notification included a general report alerting them to the fact that the incident occurred. However, we have not notified them about the presence of your specific information in the data breach." The letter went on to tell recipients to take preventative measures to avert and detect any misuse of information. These steps included closely monitoring financial accounts; contacting financial institutions if unauthorized activity was detected; and placing a fraud alert on credit files. [...] Via an e-mail correspondence with The World, Shirley MacAdam said the March 5 letters were sent to the 482 employees of four clients — only one of which was a public agency. She demurred from identifying the clients involved, but further investigation revealed the County and South Coast Hospice & Palliative Care in Coos Bay are among the four. [...] _______________________________________________ Dataloss Mailing List (dataloss () attrition org) http://attrition.org/dataloss Tenable Network Security offers data leakage and compliance monitoring solutions for large and small networks. Scan your network and monitor your traffic to find the data needing protection before it leaks out! http://www.tenablesecurity.com/products/compliance.shtml
Current thread:
- Accountant firm reports stolen laptop - four clients involved rchick (Apr 28)