News headlines recently are full of stories about the Heartbleed Bug, a software flaw announced by security experts, which allows attackers to collect information from some encrypted Web and email servers and is believed to impact as many as 500 million Web sites worldwide. The following information is provided to help our customers and employees know how this bug may affect our business:

• Assessments of our internal and external online systems have been done and we show no exposure to the Heartbleed bug.
• Assessments of the third party systems Baldor and Baldor employees’ access have been done and those also show no exposure to the Heartbleed bug.
• Assessments of all interconnections between Baldor and vendors we do data exchange with have been done and we show no exposure to the Heartbleed bug.
• We have no plans at this time to send a mass email to our employees or customers related to the Heartbleed bug.
• There is no immediate need, related to this bug, to change online passwords for any of the above mentioned systems, but as always, it is OK to do so.

Please refer to this CNN.com article for additional information about the Heartbleed Bug and to this Federal government resource for best practices regarding passwords and online security.