Bethpage handling calls after data leak

Calls by customers to Bethpage Federal Credit Union have surged since the lender announced a large data leak Tuesday, the company said.

Meanwhile, a key regulator for Bethpage, the National Credit Union Administration, said in a statement Wednesday it was "satisfied" with measures the credit union was taking after the disclosure of customer information to the Internet.

A spokesman for the credit union, which has been notifying customers via email, telephone and letter, said call volume to its beefed-up 60-person customer call center in Bethpage almost doubled Tuesday and was expected to have almost tripled to 5,000 Wednesday from the usual 1,750 a day.

In a statement, Bethpage said that while it received "a great deal of calls and some people have to wait in queue, we are handling the calls." It said few requested new account numbers and only five closed accounts.

Bethpage disclosed Tuesday that information for 85,797 of its 203,000 members was inadvertently made available on the Internet from May 3 to June 3 by an employee who has since resigned. The data, which were removed June 3, included names, addresses, dates of birth, Visa card numbers and expiration dates, and members' savings and checking account numbers. The credit union said it knew of no unauthorized use of debit cards or unauthorized withdrawals from accounts resulting from the leak.

Like other credit unions, Bethpage is regulated by the National Credit Union Administration, based in Alexandria, Va., which said in a statement Wednesday that it was "satisfied that the credit union was taking all appropriate measures to address the situation including hiring outside experts."

Some Bethpage customers praised its handling of the matter.  Alesia Simco, 41, a Kings Park mental health counselor and seven-year member of Bethpage, says it has been good at rectifying problems, and "they handled it as best they could." Bethpage notified her husband by telephone Tuesday of the leak.

Less sanguine was Bethpage member Matthew Pascucci, 30, of Bethpage, who works in cyber security for another Long Island company. He switched from Bank of America to Bethpage a month ago because he believed larger banks were more susceptible to data breaches. "I recently moved all my accounts over to Bethpage so something like this wouldn't happen," he said in an email. "I need to re-evaluate my decision now."

Alan Theriault, president of CU Financial Services, a Portland, Maine, consulting firm for credit unions, thinks the long-term impact on Bethpage should be minimal. "It does happen, whether it's inadvertent or cybercrime, and people will understand as long as the credit union is proactive, which it sounds like they are."

With Carrie Mason-Draffen