The Department of Consumer Affairs said Thursday it is reviewing why two full days passed before its staff started investigating a major data security breach that special e-mail filtering software detected last month.

Consumer Affairs spokesman Russ Heimerich said the internal review will soon result in changes so potential misuse of confidential personnel or other information through e-mail is dealt with more swiftly in the future.

"We are already looking at a couple of options to ensure that that doesn't happen again," Heimerich said.

Consumer Affairs launched the review after a data security breach in early June that alarmed the department's employees and triggered a criminal investigation.

Rachael Rivas Dumbrique, a Consumer Affairs personnel specialist in Sacramento, e-mailed a so-called "alpha" personnel file containing names and Social Security numbers of the department's more than 5,000 staff members to a personal Yahoo e-mail account at the end of the day Friday, June 6, her last day at the department.

Consumer Affairs' special e-mail filtering software spotted Dumbrique's transmission and immediately sent a copy of it to a special department computer security account where officials review suspect e-mails and decide what action, if any, to take, Heimerich said.

The filtering software catches between 30 and 70 suspect e-mails per day that are reviewed one at a time, Heimerich said.

"The vast majority are legitimate, but they all have to be reviewed by human eyes," Heimerich said. "In addition, because this e-mail went out late on a Friday, the in-box where those suspected e-mails are duplicated did not get checked until Monday morning."

That was June 9 – a response Consumer Affairs now admits was too slow, given the circumstances.

"I can't get too specific because it's a security matter, but I can tell you that both the way those e-mails are handled and the way in which notifications occur are likely to change in the very near future," Heimerich said.

Consumer Affairs alerted its employees about the breach at the end of the work day June 9. Since then, it has offered identity theft protection services, credit monitoring and fraud insurance at no cost for a year to everyone affected.

What the department did not disclose to staff members was that Dumbrique recently married a member of the Mexican Mafia, Edward Dumbrique, who is now serving a 29-year sentence in state prison for a drive-by murder in Southern California.

Consumer Affairs investigators raided Rachael Dumbrique's home June 13, seizing two computers, CDs and confidential documents from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from a bedroom closet.

Heimerich said the criminal investigation is continuing. So far, he said, officials haven't found evidence that the Social Security numbers have been misused and no employees have formally reported identity theft.

Dumbrique has made no comment, but sent an e-mail to former bosses at Consumer Affairs, saying she sent the data roster to her personal e-mail account inadvertently and would not have done so had she known it included Social Security numbers.

Her bosses didn't buy that explanation, Consumer Affairs investigators said in court documents. Dumbrique now works for the Department of Mental Health.

Call The Bee's Andrew McIntosh, (916) 321-1215.