Security breach 'won't result in identity theft'

ACT Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services Joy Burch
says a security breach involving data from her department is unlikely
to result in identity theft.

In November last year, a department employee breached protocol and
downloaded information onto a laptop to take home.

The laptop was stolen during a home burglary.

Ms Burch says clients have been notified about the breach.

"Certainly the advice to me is that the data did contain information,
such as family names, some given names and a postcode and or a date of
birth," she said.

"But there is an absolute guarantee that no addresses or phone numbers
or any other personal details was included in the data and in the
information that was lost."

But Opposition spokesman Steve Doszpot says clients were not informed
of the incident until this month and should have been notified
immediately.

"I haven't heard a clear explanation given of why it took
two-and-a-half months to inform the people whose records had been
stolen, that situation had occurred, the theft of the laptop," he
said.

"That should have been first and foremost in case there was any other
untoward activity that was taking place."

Ms Burch says there was a good reason for the delay.

"The delay in writing to our clients was to go through an exercise of
looking at the data and matching as much as we can so we had
confidence of being able to write off the people that were concerned.
We've written to more probably than what we need to," she said.