Prince George's County School Employees’ Social Security Numbers Emailed Out Erroneously

A document that contained Prince George’s County Public School System employees’ personal information was emailed outside of the district to the personal addresses of certain staff, the Washington Post reports.

Employees were notified of the breach on Friday evening, about a week after the incident. The wrongful recipients also have been contacted.

About 10,000 of the district’s 23,785 employees are affected.

Theresa Dudley, a teacher at Benjamin Tasker Middle School, said data breaches have become commonplace, noting the security breaches at Target and Home Depot. “It’s the age we live in,” Dudley said.

Sensitive data was inadvertently included in a routine monthly report emailed internally. When officials became aware, the district instructed information technology staff to suspend the email accounts while they removed the email from the inboxes.

During that process, they discovered that some of the information was sent outside the school system.

Misplaced data is one of the biggest insider threats for government agencies.

Email misfires and other errors account for more than a third of data breaches in the public sector, according to Verizon’s annual data breach report. Unapproved or malicious use of data by public servants represents 24 percent of reported incidents.

Read the rest at ThreatWatch, Nextgov’s regularly updated index of cyber breaches.

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(Image via zimmytws/Shutterstock.com)