Jul 7, 2008

Last Thursday, News.com reported that someone broke into an HR outsourcing company and stole several computers containing unencrypted data that included the Social Security numbers of CNET and Google employees -- and their dependents. I empathize with the individuals who are now wondering about what might happen with their data (I've had my own personal information stolen on more than one occasion and it's not a fun place to be).

What I found most striking about the article though was the list of 'related stories' that News.com pointed to. It was a sad reminder that the staffers at CNET and Google aren't the first to discover that their personal info has been compromised by a data breach, nor are they likely to be the last.

Here's a partial rundown of similar incidents that News.com linked to:

• November 2007 -- A laptop containing data on 10,000 Home Depot employees was stolen from the car of a Home Depot regional manager.
• March 2007 -- IBM reported that it 'lost' electronic tapes containing sensitive employee data; the tapes reportedly fell out of an employee's car while being transported from one facility to another.
• December 2006 -- For the third time in about a year, Boeing reported that a laptop was stolen. It contained Social Security numbers, birth dates and contact information of 382,000 former and current company employees.
• June 2006 -- A laptop was stolen from the car of an Ernst & Young employee who was responsible for auditing Hotels.com; it contained credit card data for about 243,000 Hotels.com customers.
• June 2006 -- A company hired to prepare a document management system for a student loan company 'lost' hardware containing the names and Social Security numbers of 1.3 million loan customers.
• March 2006 -- A laptop belonging to a Fidelity Investments employee working on a project for Hewlett Packard was stolen; it contained Social Security numbers and other sensitive information on 196,000 former and current HP employees.

Now, I'm not a security expert. But perhaps employees/contractors with access to other people's Social Security and credit card numbers shouldn't be lugging that data around on their laptops. Or at the very least, they should think twice about leaving those laptops in their cars.

Tags: cyber security, cybercrime, data breach, Google, identity theft, News.com