ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County's public school district is asking employees to delete a document that contained confidential information for some of its workers.
- Teacher-raise calculator posted to intranet exposed hidden document
- It had list of workers, but some were exempt from public records laws
- School district said calculator was removed hours after it was posted
The document was made accessible after a glitch was found in a teacher salary-increase calculator posted last week to the Orange County Public Schools' employee computer system. The calculator contained what the district said was a "password-protected" hidden worksheet made up of a list of employees and 25 fields of employee information.
According to a statement from the school system, "one field contained the employee's date of birth, which is a public record, except for a small number of employees who legally qualify for confidential exempt status from public records laws."
A digital expert told us that although this information was on an internal employee site, it could still potentially be compromised.
"There is also a little bit of false sense of security around some intranets, because we think everything should be safe and secure, but that is not always the case," said Tom Jelneck of On Target Digital Marketing. "There are exploits to intranets, just like there are to internets."
According to Orange Public Schools, the calculator was removed within hours after it was posted. The district said that the worksheet did not have social security numbers, home addresses, or driver's license numbers. A generic salary calculator has been added to replace the original.