The personal information of former and current members of the Army National Guard may be affected by a breach of personal information, the Guard said Friday.
Unrelated to the OPM breaches, files containing the personal information of all current and former Army National Guard members since 2004 was “inadvertently transferred to a non-DoD-accredited data center by a contract employee,” Maj. Earl Brown, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau said.
“This was not a hacking incident, in which the intent was to use data for financial gain,” Brown said.
The affected data include soldiers’ names, full Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and home addresses.
Although the Guard does not believe the data will be used unlawfully because “the issue was identified and promptly reported,” it determined “out of an abundance of caution” to inform past and current Guard personnel that their Personally Identifiable Information (PII) was among the files transferred.
The Guard set up a web page and toll-free call center available from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. EST, Monday through Friday at 877-276-4729 to help members protect against identity theft.
The Guard did not state how long this information was on the non-accredited data center.