SEC Data Breach Affects 4,000 Employees

About 4,000 employees of the Securities and Exchange Commission have been notified that their Social Security numbers and other payroll information were sent out in an unencrypted email message, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The email was sent May 4 by a contractor at the Interior Department's National Business Center, which handles payroll processing for numerous federal agencies. Such messages are supposed to be encrypted. A department spokesman said there's no indication anyone intercepted the data, which only was exposed for about a minute.

Still, employees have been offered 60 days of free credit monitoring to determine if any data fell into the wrong hands.