Alcatel-Lucent trying to find lost disk

Alcatel-Lucent said Friday it is reviewing security procedures and has halted use of couriers for sending personnel information after a computer disk with financial and other data on employees and retirees went missing.

The Paris-based telecommunications equipment maker said it is trying to recover the disk by working with the courier used to ship it and two outside vendors involved in the shipment. The company also notified the New Jersey State Police and the U.S. Secret Service.

The disk was either lost or stolen sometime between April 5 and May 3. It holds names, addresses, Social Security numbers, birth dates and salary data for thousands of employees, retirees and dependents on the company's U.S. payroll, said Peter Benedict, a spokesman at the company's North American headquarters in Murray Hill, N.J. Credit card numbers and bank account information were not on the disk.

It affects only those who worked for Murray-Hill, N.J.-based Lucent Technologies before it was acquired by Paris-based Alcatel in December, the company said.

"We've now requested that all our vendors suspend all similar transmissions of personal information by a courier while we investigate," he said. "We're reviewing our security procedures to make sure all secure information is protected."

According to Benedict, Hewitt Associates, a consultant to Alcatel-Lucent on health care benefits, created a disk with the information and shipped the disk via UPS to another outside vendor, Aon Corp. He said it was going from a Hewitt office in Bridgewater to an Aon office in Somerset. Aon does employee benefits consulting for Alcatel-Lucent.

Aon spokesman Al Orendorff said Friday that the circumstances of how and when the CD-ROM disk vanished are unknown.

Hewitt Associates spokeswoman Jennifer Frighetto declined to discuss the situation, other than to say it is working with Alcatel-Lucent and gives its clients' data the utmost importance.

UPS spokeswoman Lynnette McIntire said it is still investigating, checking everything from its vehicles and conveyor belts in sorting facilities to its "lost and found" areas around the country.

"Whenever we get a report of a missing package, we treat it urgently and critically, whether it ends up being misplaced by UPS or another party," she said.

McIntire said the company ships about 15 million packages a day and loss of items is "very, very rare."

Alcatel-Lucent said it was notifying employees, retirees and their dependents about what happened and arranging to provide anyone at risk with a year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

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