The credit monitoring and identity protection services offered free of charge to federal employees potentially impacted by the initial data breach announced by OPM in spring 2015 will expire on December 1.

That coverage, provided through Winvale/CSID, covers 4.2 million individuals whose personal identification information may have been stolen as a result of the first of two data breaches OPM announced last year.

As of December 2, all of those 4.2 million individuals will be eligible for similar coverage through ID Experts (MyIDCare).

ID Experts was contracted by OPM to provide similar protection to 21.5 million individuals whose personal information was compromised in a second data breach revealed later in 2015, of OPM’s database of background check information. The protection offered through ID Experts is to cover affected individuals for 10 years.

OPM has sent out notices to those among the 4.2 million initial victims of the data breach whose coverage with Winvale/CSID will be expiring December 1. Those notices explain the process of re-enrolling with MyIDCare prior to December 1, so that those individuals can retain uninterrupted monitoring and protective services.

FEA urges all its members who were impacted by that data breach in 2015 to be on the lookout for the notice from OPM. Only those currently covered by Winvale/CSID must now enroll with MyIDCare. Anyone already enrolled with MyIDCare does not need to do anything in order for that coverage to continue. Many of those affected by the initial data breach were also victims of the background data breach, and so they may already be enrolled with MyIDCare.

For more information, visit this page at OPM’s Web site, here.