Maryland Department Of Labor Database Breached, 78K Customers May Have Had Personal Information Taken
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- The Maryland Department of Labor is notifying its 78,000 customers about a breach on two of its databases.
The Literacy Works Information Systems and a legacy unemployment insurance service database were breached.
"Files stored on the Literacy Works Information System (LWIS) and a legacy unemployment insurance service database were subject to the incident. The LWIS files impacted were from 2009, 2010, and 2014. These files possibly contained first names, last names, social security numbers, dates of birth, city or county of residence, graduation dates and record numbers. The files impacted on the unemployment insurance service database were from 2013 and possibly contained first names, last names, and social security numbers," a press release stated.
The DOL said that although some personal information was accessed, it has not seen any misuse of the data.
An investigation was opened into the incident and the department implemented countermeasures to prevent more information from being accessed.
"We live in an age of highly sophisticated information security threats," said Acting Labor Secretary James E. Rzepkowski. "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."
Anyone whose information was breached are asked to carefully monitor their accounts and the DOl will offer free credit monitoring for two years.
Customers who believe they have been affected by the incident can contact the Department of Labor's dedicated hotline by emailing dataincident.labor@maryland.gov or calling 410-767-5899. This hotline will be staffed Monday-Friday from 8:00am-4:30pm. For additional information, please visit labor.maryland.gov/datahotline.