Miss. Guard personnel information compromised - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Miss. Guard personnel information compromised

JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi National Guard is investigating the extent of a security breach after nearly 3,000 active members' personnel records, including social security numbers, were posted online for several weeks.

"Information management is working feverishly to get to the bottom of it," Tim Powell, a spokesman for the National Guard, told the Associated Press. "We take this very seriously and are incorporating numerous layers of Internet security on our website."

Powell said the website can no longer be accessed.

The National Guard and the AP were notified about the breach by Aaron Titus, information privacy director of Liberty Coalition, a Washington-based policy institute.

The institute operates the website, NationalIDWatch.org. Titus said the free site can be used to find out if anyone's personal information was compromised.

The administrative records belonged to the 155th Brigade Combat Team, and were compiled at various times between 2006 and 2008, including while the brigade was deployed in Iraq, Titus said.

The files contained 2,674 unique names and 2,672 social security numbers, he said. Other breached information included dates of birth, security clearance data, ranks and pay grades and home and cell phone numbers.

Powell wouldn't confirm whose files were breached, but he did say the 155th has returned from its Iraq deployment.

The files had been online since Sept. 10, posted on the brigade team's Sharepoint website, which was insecure and didn't require a password to access.

He said during that month's time the files could have been potentially viewed by anyone surfing the Web. However, he said odds are usually low for identity theft in such situations.

"It's usually all or nothing. Either some guy found the information and is sitting on it or, it wasn't found. We just don't know," Titus said.

Though the Guard is investigating how the breach occurred, Titus believes it inadvertently happened when someone uploaded the files to a new computer system.

"I don't think it was anything but negligence," Titus said.