OhioBWC - Home: Current News | ||||
|
Data of 439 Claimants Contained on Stolen Laptop, Columbus, Ohio – The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) announced today that a laptop computer was stolen from the home of a BWC employee. The computer contained some non-public, personal information of 439 injured workers. “Securing the integrity of digital information is critically important no matter how many or how few individuals are affected,” said BWC Administrator Marsha Ryan. “The recent theft of a storage device and the executive order signed by Governor Ted Strickland heightened everyone’s sense of awareness about this important issue.” The BWC is currently notifying both the employers and the claimants. Free identity protection service will be offered to the affected injured workers. The service will be provided by Debix and each affected injured worker will receive a letter with a specific PIN number and sign up instructions. “While the information was password protected and did not contain financial data, it did include certain information such as claimant Social Security numbers,” said Ryan. “As a public institution, we must be more diligent in protecting the personal information contained on both internal and external digital devices.” Claimant information was included on the stolen laptop computer because it belonged to a BWC auditor who reviews workers’ compensation programs for Ohio’s self-insured employers. These are large Ohio businesses that privately administer and manage their own workers’ compensation claims. BWC audits these programs to ensure integrity, which includes sampling and verifying individual claim information. The stolen laptop computer contained data from audits performed at 24 employers. The data contained non-public information for 439 injured workers that included such information as a claimant’s name, claim number, date of injury, Social Security number, amount of workers’ compensation received, and possibly the medical diagnosis associated with the workplace injury. “While we do not want to unduly alarm the hundreds of thousands of injured workers throughout Ohio who are not affected by this, we do want to make the public aware of this incident given the overall sense of concern throughout the state at this time,” said Ryan. The timeline below will provide an overview of the event and the subsequent response:
# # # Contact: 1-800-OHIOBWC or FeedbackMDS@bwc.state.oh.us
|