The personal information of more than 10,000 Michigan Catholic diocese employees and related organizations may have been compromised in a recent data security breach.
The breach occurred through an online payroll portal of the Michigan Catholic Conference, which provides services to state Catholic agencies.
Conference Director of Communications David Maluchnik says the intrusion was first discovered in late July. It was disclosed in a letter to impacted employees last week.
“We’ve done everything that we can to make sure that that problem has been taken care of, and that we have reached out to all those people who are potentially impacted," he says. "So that they know what took place, what we’re doing to secure our computer systems, and what they can do to receive a (free) credit monitoring service that we’re going to be offering to them.”
Compromised information includes the names, addresses, social security numbers, and payroll data of Catholic school, church, diocese and other related employees.
An official with the 11-county Catholic Diocese of Grand Rapids says it affects 66 of its 3,200 diocesan employees as well as employees at four other non-diocesan entities, including the Muskegon Catholic Central School district.
Another 550 employees of the Catholic Diocese of Kalamazoo received letters from the conference.
Agencies in Saginaw, Detroit, Lansing and other cities were also impacted.
Maluchnik says no priests or other religious clergy were affected by the breach.
There is also no impact on any church parishioners.
You can learn more about the breach here.
