May 29, 2007
Mr. Ken
Raschke
President,
Lucent Retirees Organization
231 Pinetuck
Lane
Winstom-Salem,
North Carolina 27104
Dear Ken:
Pat Russo
asked me to respond to your letter of May 27th to
make sure you understand that we take this issue very seriously
and have consulted with experts in the field who have dealt with
issues involving the loss of personal information. As a result
of those engagements, we have deployed and are deploying "best
in class" practices including:
-
Initiated
an internal investigation immediately upon being notified
that a disk appeared to be missing
-
Contacted
the U.S. Secret Service and state and local authorities once
we had confirmed that the disk appeared to be lost or
missing
-
Required
each of the vendors involved with this issue to conduct an
additional thorough search and an internal investigation to
ensure the disk was not misplaced, after two of the vendors
indicated to us that they had not fully exhausted their
searches for the disk. We issued the press release the day
those searches were completed.
-
Sent an
email to all employees impacted and contacted the LRO for
their help in informing retirees.
-
Issued a
press release so that the story would be picked up by the
media and therefore would help ensure anyone impacted would
be informed
-
Asked
vendors to suspend transmitting personal information in this
manner until more secure procedures are developed.
-
Established an 800 number for people to call with questions
-
Arranging
for premium credit monitoring services free of charge for
one year, for anyone impacted
-
Sending a
letter by mail
to all former Lucent employees and retirees and their adult
dependents informing them of what has happened and
information about the credit monitoring services we have
arranged for them
-
Advising
employees, retirees and their dependents of some immediate
steps they should take to protect their credit information
-
Posted on
the Alcatel-Lucent web site a set of questions and answers
to help those impacted understand what happened and what
steps they can take to protect themselves and followed it up
with an additional set of questions and answers to provide
answers to the most frequently asked questions.
Mr. Raschke,
we have engaged numerous subject matter experts in this matter
and based on their counsel we deployed communications that are
considered "best practices" in terms of timeliness and the
information they contained to address this issue including the
actions we have taken. I
should also add that, at this point, we are not aware of any
instance where the information on the disk was used
inappropriately.
I appreciate
your concern and also want to thank you for your assistance in
helping us get the information to retirees quickly.
Sincerely,
Steve Reynolds
General
Counsel
Alcatel-Lucent
Cc: Pat Russo
Frank
D'Amelio