California School District Suffers Data Breach

Current and former employees for a school district near Sacramento, California, were recently alerted that their personal information was exposed in a data breach.

More than 4,000 people who currently or previously worked for the San Juan Unified School District learned that their private personal information was posted online and available through a simple Web search for six months, according to a report from the Sacramento Bee. However, the notification letters were criticized by those affected as being somewhat misleading.

In particular, it noted that the data breach only affected a "limited number" of people and that the data was "not readily accessible or retrievable," the report said. The data exposed included names and Social Security numbers, which were copied from a district-issued flash drive and inadvertently uploaded to a church website. Now, the organization is changing its policies.

"No flash drives will be allowed," district spokesman Trent Allen told the newspaper. "There is no reason to be copying information out of the network."

Organizations that handle and store personal employee data, should refer two helpful articles. Check out Security is a Journey and Privacy by Design.