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A DES hard drive containing sensitive information for a number of Arizona children has been stolen from a storage unit.

DES officials say there is no reason to believe that any of the information has been compromised as the hard drive is password-protected, but as a precaution, letters were sent out Oct. 24 to the families of 40,000 children across the state.

The hard drive contained names, addresses and phone numbers for families referred for the Arizona Early Intervention Program over the past several years, said Vicki Gaubeca, a DES spokeswoman.

Any information beyond that, such as Social Security numbers, insurance information and children's disability information would be on the hard drive only for those who applied for and received services.

The program is a statewide system of support and services for families of children up to 3 years old with disabilities or developmental delays.

"The safety and security of our families and their information is paramount at DES," said Liz Barker Alvarez, another DES spokeswoman.

"While we do not believe that any of our families have had their information misused, out of an abundance of caution, we wanted to make them aware of the resources available to help them monitor their personal accounts and take steps to protect themselves," she said.

The back-up hard drive was stored in a public storage unit in Phoenix. Several other storage units that were not being used by DES were also broken into, which leads the agency to believe that it was not targeted.

The state's data security policy requires that data be backed up and stored in an off-site, secured location.