Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department Breach
Date: November, 2018Washington State makes its food workers take special food safety training courses to obtain a food worker card. This special card is required to work with food, and a huge portion of the state's population holds one of these cards. It was recently disclosed that a huge data breach occurred with these cards back in 2018, and new information just came out in June informing the state that more delicate information may have been involved for some of the food workers.
What Was the Breach?
- First and Last Names
- Birth Dates
- Zip Codes
- Email Addresses
- Driver's License Numbers
How Did the Breach Occur?
The Washington State Food Worker Card, an online training platform, suffered a database breach that could compromise nearly 20% of the state's population. According to the state, the data breach resulted in the loss of pretty standard information for most of the people involved, but some had their driver's license numbers compromised as well. When that happened, it put some people at risk for identity theft and more serious issues. There is a very real potential for phishing attacks as well.
When Did This Breach Occur?
This Washington food worker breach is a unique one because it occurred back on November 18, 2018. At that time, the state didn't believe enough personal data was taken for it to be necessary to ever disclose the breach occurred. Now that the state has realized that driver's license numbers were also involved for some people, it's decided to disclose that the breach occurred. If you were a food worker prior to the date in 2018, you could have had your data stolen.
Who Does the Breach Impact?
This data breach affects any Washington State food service worker that was working in the industry before November 2018. If you had a food worker card at that time, your data was likely stolen.
How Many Files Does the Breach Affect?
We don't have a count for the Washington State file count taken by the attackers that breached the network. We know that more than 1.5 million people were impacted by the breach and that approximately 9,500 of those individuals had their license numbers taken in the breach too.
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