Roanoke City Public Schools surplus computers put employees at risk
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Date Reported:
6/1/10
Organization:
Roanoke City Public Schools
Contractor/Consultant/Branch:
None
Location:
Roanoke, Virginia
Victims:
Persons employed by the Division in November, 2006
Number Affected:
"more than 2,000"
Types of Data:
"names, school locations and Social Security numbers"
Breach Description:
"Computers with hard drives containing personal data of school employees as of November 2006 were sold as surplus. The drives have since been recovered."
Reference URL:
Roanoke City Public Schools email to employees
The Roanoke Times
Report Credit:
Courtney Cutright, The Roanoke Times
Response:
From the online sources cited above:
Personal information of more than 2,000 Roanoke City Public Schools employees may be at risk.
School officials this afternoon said the hard drives of eight computers were not removed before the units were sold as surplus.
"We believe that we have recovered all of the hard drives," said Superintendent Rita Bishop.
[Evan] It's great news that the school recovered all of the hard drives.
The drives contained the names, school locations and Social Security numbers of the division's employees as of November 2006.
The division will be setting up a hotline for employees to call with questions and concerns. Free credit monitoring service will be offered to affected employees.
Commentary:
According to the letter to employees; "RCPS administrators were alerted that standard procedures had not been followed with the sale of outdated computers from the Division". There is no indication of who alerted the RCPS administrators, but the fact that they were may mean that they have a good incident reporting process. I suppose it could be luck too, or maybe some combination. Anyway, it appears as though the risk to the employees is relatively low.
Past Breaches:
Unknown
Posted by Evan Francen at 6/7/2010 10:19 AM 
Categories: Roanoke City Public Schools, Insecure Discard
Categories: Roanoke City Public Schools, Insecure Discard
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