Last updated 14 months ago 
SACRAMENTO, CA - Hundreds of current and former employees with Sutter Health will soon get a letter telling them their personal data has been compromised.
Officials for the company's Sacramento Sierra region recently recieved a big surprise when they were contacted by a computer repair shop.
"The repair people did the right thing and told us they had our laptop," said Sutter Communication Coordinator Kami Lloyd. The laptop contained names and social security numbers of 6,000 Sutter Health workers.
A letter sent to workers said Sutter believed an employee had possession of a company laptop since 2007 but late last month it showed up at a computer repair business. When technicians realized where the computer came from, they returned the hard drive to Sutter.
The letter pointed out a forensic analysis that revealed the computer repair business did open a file that containted workers' Social Security information. Although the repair shop wrote a certified letter stating it didn't retain any information on the hard drive, Sutter advised employees to contact credit reporting companies and put fraud alerts on their credit files.
The letter went on to say workers should contact police if they notice suspicious activity on their credit reports.
Sutter has also told employees that a company called Kroll Inc. will "provide you with access to its ID TheftSmart service at no cost to you for one years."
The letter stated Sutter has taken steps to safeguard employees information in the future by encrypting all data on company laptops and only an authorized password can retrieve that info.
Employees were also told to save files and documents to network drives and not PC hard drives.
According to the letter, Sutter will track the disposal of old computers to make sure old laptops or desktop computers are returned when new systems are issued.
News10/KXTV
