NANTICOKE — Personal information — including social security numbers — of more than 200 employees at Luzerne County Community College was accidentally sent via email to all of those employees on Wednesday.
Robert Bogdon, the college’s director of marketing, confirmed on Thursday that an email was sent out Wednesday to Luzerne County Community College staff regarding employee 2015 W2 forms.
“Attached to the email was a file that contained the following information: employee names, ID numbers, social security numbers, and employees’ annual health care coverage amounts paid by the College. This email was distributed to luzerne.edu email accounts only,” Bogdon said via email in response to an inquiry.
Bogdon said the college has taken “immediate action” to address the release of confidential information.
“The College’s Information Technology Division removed the email in question from recipients’ accounts and removed occurrences of the file attachment from College computers. The administration is preparing notifications to the necessary parties and taking additional measures to ensure this does not happen again,” Bogdon said.
Bogdon also confirmed that the breach of security involved the information of 264 employees.
“This happened relatively recently and is still being looked into and additional safeguards will be put into place where needed. Immediate steps included informing recipients of the error and asking them not to share the information they may have seen with anyone. However, the IT department quickly removed the email and attachment,” Bogdon said in response to follow-up questions.
Bogdon said he didn’t have answers to questions such as who sent the email and who alerted employees to the situation.
But sources at the college who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said the email was sent by an employee of the business office. Neither a home phone or cellphone number were available for the employee, and she did not immediately reply to messages sent to her LCCC email address and to her Facebook account.
In addition to the college administration, LCCC teachers union representatives also are looking into the incident.
Brian Overman, president of Luzerne County Community College Association of Higher Education, said he could not yet speak about the incident because “we ourselves are investigating the data breach and any potential ramifications.”
“The prime concern is to protect anyone who may have had private information exposed,” Overman said.