June 23, 2023 - CalPERS (the California Public Employees Retirement System) is the largest state-run retirement system in the country. On Wednesday, they announced that their system had been penetrated by bad actors, leading to release of the personally identifiable information of 769,000 retirees and beneficiaries. The information release was more than enough to commit identity theft.

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The CalPERS system wasn't penetrated directly. According to the information provided, a subcontractor had a system vulnerability which hackers were able to exploit.

The data released includes names, addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers. Additionally, based on the information provided by CalPERS, there is concern that the data also included similar information for beneficiaries of retired employees.

CalPERS found out about the breach two weeks ago and is now in the process of notifying those affected by it. Anyone receiving these notifications is entitled to two years of credit monitoring, however such programs are only able to notify victims once their data is used in an identity crime. ACCESS advises anyone who thinks that their data may have been included in this release to freeze their credit file. That will prevent anyone from opening new lines of credit in your name and it is one of the few effective deterrents to identity theft.

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