Maryland Department of Labor has suffered from data breach compromising 78000 customers’ PII

A press release was published by the Maryland DoL (Department of Labor), which says that an unauthorized third-party has accessed sensitive information of around 78,000 customers including the names as well as social security numbers.

The unauthorized third-party has accessed the customer information that was stored on Literacy Works Information System (LWIS) as well as on one legacy unemployment insurance service database.

Once discovered, an internal investigation was conducted by the Maryland's DoIT (Department of Information Technology) about the data breach. After initial internal investigation, an independent security expert as well as law enforcement agencies have been contacted. However, till date, no evidence was found to confirm whether any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) has been extracted or downloaded from compromised servers. The Maryland DoL has implemented countermeasures in order to avoid such kind of incidents from occurring in the future.

As disclosed by department, the two affected databases contain following records types. The LWIS files that were impacted are of year 2009, year 2010, and year 2014. These LWIS files possibly contain the first and last names, graduation dates, social security numbers, county or city of residence, dates of birth as well as record numbers. The files that were impacted on unemployment insurance service database are of year 2013 and probably contain the first and last names, as well as social security numbers.

Maryland DoL is contacting all the customers who got impacted by this data breach incident, as well as encouraging them to cautiously monitor their accounts. Moreover, the affected customers were offered 24 months of complementary credit monitoring from the Experian's IdentityWorks.

"We live in an age of highly sophisticated information security threats. We are committed to doing all we can to protect our customers and their information. We strongly urge those impacted to be vigilant about unusual activity on their accounts, and to take advantage of the credit monitoring being offered by the state," said James E. Rzepkowski, the Acting Labor Secretary, in an interview.

John Evans, Chief Information Security Officer of Maryland, said that "Maryland is working to ensure its cybersecurity strategy and policy are in alignment with best practices and the latest federal standards and guidelines".

» SPAMfighter News - 8/2/2019