Government institutions have suffered a number of very public data breaches over the last couple of years. There was the large loss of VA data and there was the theft of personal information on patients at Walter Reed. In this case, tucked away in the state of Washington, is Fort Lewis. Housed at this base are a number of army units. While there are no numbers provided for the total amount of soldiers at the base, in this specific incidence anywhere from 800-900 active army personnel has been affected. As if these troops who serve overseas didn’t have enough to worry about, the threat of identity theft can now be added to the list.

The breach took place over the July 4th weekend. A civilian contractor who is working for the Army on a project which has not been announced had the personal data on an external hard drive and a laptop computer. He left this material in his truck on the evening of July 3 and reported the theft around 10 AM the next morning. In the statement that he gave to the police he admitted that he had left all the electronic material in plain sight on top of his passenger seat and that he had failed to lock his truck. Investigations are continuing into this theft, both by the military police and the Lacey Police Department.

While there has been no word about what all the private data consisted of, authorities are taking the matter very seriously. The contractor, whose name has been withheld by both Lacey and military police, said that the laptop and hard drive contained no secret or top secret information, although this is of little concern to those who might now be the victims of identity theft. As of the writing of this article, there have been no confirmed cases of misuse of the information, although this might change in the future. The Army and other government institutions have been focusing on increasing security to prevent this type of breach from happening. Standard regulations and policies exist to prevent the transfer of private data off-site. It appears that the contractor was within his rights, having received the approval of his supervisor to move the material on a portable external hard drive. There is no word on how the contractor will be reprimanded by the Army for his careless placement of the data once he was outside the base.

The individuals were impacted by this breach were contacted on the phone by Fort Lewis personnel to alert them of the theft. Everyone was supposed to be reached by last Wednesday. Although emails and phone calls have been the method at this point, letters will be sent in the mail providing follow up information. Those who are worried that they might be victims of identity theft can subscribe to Lifelock, an ID theft service that monitors all three credit bureaus. They keep an eye out for loan and credit card applications, two frequently employed methods of identity thieves, and contact the person whose name appears on the paperwork. Lifelock verifies that the applications are legitimate and if not, prevents them from going through the system.

Tags: lifelock, US Army, Walter Reed Hospital

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm and is filed under Government Breaches, Individuals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.