Approximately 1,800 Sacramento State employees were mailed letters last week warning their personal information, including Social Security and driver’s license numbers, may have been stolen as a result of a security breach that was found last month.

On Aug. 21, Sac State Information Resources and Technology noticed a strange event on its servers and immediately shut them down.

An investigation conducted by IRT found unauthorized activity and a large amount of personal data had been copied off the system.

“It was an outside attack (due to) a poorly written Web page,” said network security analyst David Crawford.

Director of Public Affairs Kim Nava said the letters were sent to notify potentially affected employees and offered tips on how to prevent identity theft.

Crawford said the incident showed the importance of software engineers’ “trustworthy and robust code.”

He said Sac State, which has a total of 3,055 employees, used an abundance of caution when responding to the case by first conducting a thorough investigation and analysis.

IRT worked up a mailing list and sent the letters to properly follow civil code when, in September, it was determined a breach had occurred.

Nava said there have been no reports of identity theft as of Tuesday.