Commentary
Connecticut Attorney General Blasts Bank Of New York Mellon
It's happened again. Another backup tape with millions of customers' information has gone missing. The tape was lost on Feb. 27, and the Connecticut authorities want to know more.It's happened again. Another backup tape with millions of customers' information has gone missing. The tape was lost on Feb. 27, and the Connecticut authorities want to know more.According to a letter from the State of Connecticut's Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal, 10 unencrypted (yes, unencrypted) backup tapes were placed in a truck for "safe" delivery to a secure storage facility. The lock at the back of the truck was busted. And, only nine tapes made it to their planned destination.
Here's what the (unencrypted) tapes contained, according to Attorney General Blumenthal's letter:
More Security Insights
White Papers
- Mobile BI: Actionable Intelligence for the Agile Enterprise
- How To Regain IT Control In An Increasingly Mobile World - by BlackBerry
Reports
More >>Webcasts
- Outsourcing Security: What Every Potential Cloud Security Customer Should Know
- Maximize ROI with Database Consolidation onto Private Clouds
BNY representatives informed my office that the information on the tapes contained, at a minimum, Social Security numbers, names and addresses, and possibly bank account numbers and balances.
In the letter, available here, the attorney general asks the bank a series of 12 questions that aim to get to the bottom of this incident, as well as any other possible incidents.
I just have two questions: Why has it taken so long for the loss of this backup tape to become public? Why wasn't the tape encrypted?
Perhaps the tape is just misplaced. Perhaps it fell out of the truck and rolled down a sewer. Perhaps only nine tapes where placed on the truck in the first place. Or maybe, a bad guy busted the lock and grabbed a tape. The broken lock on the truck points to an uncomfortable likelihood that the tape was stolen, and all 4.5 million customers should have been notified right away.
Of course, all of this could have been avoided by scrambling the information on the tape. Of all the things companies can do to protect your information, encrypting backup tapes is one of the most straightforward. The problem is, too few companies, including banks, care enough about your information to take the time, or spend a few extra bucks, to make sure it's managed safely.
Related Reading
| To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy. | |
|
|
T-Shirt Giveaway: Each week we're selecting one great comment from our readers. The author of the comment will receive an InformaitonWeek Community t-shirt. So get posting! |
Subscribe to RSSResource Links
This Week's Issue
Technology Whitepapers
- Creating the Enterprise-Class Tablet Environment - by Yankee Group
- How To Regain IT Control In An Increasingly Mobile World - by BlackBerry
- The BlackBerry PlayBook tablet's Good Bones - by BlackBerry
- Red Alert: Why Tablet Security Matters - by BlackBerry
- New Visual and Wizard-Driven Paradigms for Exploring Data and Developing Analytic Workflows
Featured Resource
This is your portal to all the news, product information, technical data, and other information related to the topic of computer user authentication and certification. Visit us to find out how to ensure that computer users are who they say they are.
Learn More












