The City of Calgary is sending registered letters to 3,716 Workers’ Compensation Board claimants who are impacted by a privacy breach.
In a release, Don von Hollen, the Acting Chief Security Officer for Corporate Security at the City says that “human error” caused information to be disclosed on June 14 and 15, 2016.
The disclosed information included WCB claim numbers, names, incident dates, details regarding the nature of the injury or claim, a brief description of the incident, costs associated with the claim, employee ID numbers, and business units.
The information was for claims from 2012 to 2016. Von Hollen says that while names and claim information were included, no personal contact information (such as address, phone number or email), Social Insurance Numbers, Personal Health Numbers, date of birth or personal banking information was released.
The City says the incident was detected early, a full investigation was conducted and efforts were made to ensure the information was contained to prevent further distribution.
The disclosure happened when a City employee working with the information was seeking technical assistance from a close contact at another Alberta municipality.
The recipient received the information at both their personal and work email addresses. The City contacted the sole recipient and the recipient’s employer and were advised that the information was not shared further and was deleted.
The City is conducting a full review of process and information and data security safeguards to ensure an incident like this does not occur again.
