Officials say a possible data breach may have compromised the personal information of more than 500 employees of a Virginia police department.
Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler Jr. told the Washington Post that he doesn’t have any reports that officers’ personal information has been exploited.
Roessler says the data was on a missing memory stick that contained the email inbox of the Purcellville police chief. Roessler said it wasn’t clear if there was a reason for the data to be in the other chief’s email or if Fairfax County also had a data breach.
But the chief says he is concerned after learning that officers’ names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers may have been compromised by the potential breach at a neighboring police department.
WJLA has covered the story here: https://wjla.com/news/local/
According to the few details that are available, it appears as if the data was on a USB memory stick which has gone missing. For companies and government departments today, storing sensitive information on portable removable media such as USB drives should be avoided and other secure forms of data transfer and storage used.
If for some reason, a portable device is needed, then the data should be encrypted so that if the device is lost or stolen, the data remains safe.