CalPERS' board had already been briefed at closed and open session meetings last week, Ms. Taylor said.
CalSTRS officials will be adding the topic to the closed session agenda at the July 25-27 board off-site meeting, said Thomas Lawrence, spokesman for the $309.3 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System, West Sacramento, in an email.
On Monday, Ms. Ma sent letters to CalPERS and CalSTRS asking that the boards schedule special meetings to discuss the data breaches at both pension funds. CalSTRS had a data breach that "compromised the personal information of nearly 400,000 CalSTRS beneficiaries," Ms. Ma said in the letter to CalSTRS.
"After discussing the request with both CEOs, Treasurer Ma agreed that the information she requested could be provided directly to her office, with ongoing updates as they become available, and that a full briefing and further discussion could take place at the boards' public meetings in July," said Joe DeAnda, director of communications for Ms. Ma's office. "Ultimately, the treasurer wants to ensure that CalPERS and CalSTRS members — particularly the retirees and beneficiaries affected — continue to receive updates in a timely manner and are provided all the information they need to protect themselves from fraudulent activity, and that both organizations have the controls and procedures in place to prevent this type of breach in the future."
Ms. Ma is confident CalPERS and CalSTRS share these goals, he added.
On June 21, CalPERS reported that it had experienced a third-party cybersecurity breach affecting the personal information of 769,000 retirees, following a closed session committee meeting. Ms. Frost also discussed the breach at the June 22 board meeting.
The breach involved PBI Research Services/Berwyn Group, an organization that assists CalPERS with confirming participants' deaths to ensure proper payment and guard against overpayment. In response, CalPERS offered impacted retirees and their beneficiaries two years of credit monitoring and additional steps they can take to protect their information.
On Monday, CalSTRS acknowledged that it had also recently experienced a data breach involving PBI Research Services, affecting 415,000 participants and beneficiaries.
In her letter, Ms. Ma asked that during the special board meetings that staffs at each plan provide the boards a full accounting of the timelines of events, staff's actions once the breaches were detected, current data security measures and protocols, and plans to prevent future breaches. Ms. Ma sits on both boards.
CalPERS' Ms. Taylor said that on Tuesday she and CalPERS' Ms. Frost discussed the matter with Ms. Ma.
"The questions she (Ms. Ma) was asking were answered at our last meeting a week ago," said Ms. Taylor, who is tasked with deciding whether to call special board meetings.
CalPERS officials will be urging affected participants to accept the credit monitoring to help protect their personal information, Ms. Frost said in an interview.
CalPERS received 1,617 calls Tuesday. So far, the credit protection firm that CalPERS hired to provide credit monitoring, Experian, has enrolled 8,350 adults in credit monitoring. CalPERS' call center received 954 calls and 201 electronic messages between June 22 and June 27, and a dedicated PBIQuestions mailbox has received 425 emails, said Brad W. Pacheco, CalPERS spokesman, in an email.
