Worth noting....
http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1531765
Co. loses personal data of 1.3M customers
Excerpt:
Thursday, June 01, 2006 7:24 a.m. ET
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Equipment containing the names and social security numbers of about 1.3 million Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp. borrowers has disappeared, company officials said.
There was no evidence the information had been misused, but Texas Guarantee said it said it would notify the affected borrowers by mail starting this week.
"It was not a security breach where someone hacked into our system," said Sue McMillin, Texas Guaranteed's president and chief executive.
The piece of equipment, which the company did not identify, was lost May 24. Officials said encrypted electronic files containing the data were sent to Hummingbird Ltd., which helps companies manage large amounts of information. A Hummingbird employee downloaded, decrypted and stored the files on a piece of equipment that was later lost.
http://www.tgslc.org/resources/customerdata.cfm
worth noting
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125962,00.asp
Hotels.com Customer Data Stolen
Theft of more than 200,000 credit card numbers reported.
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
Friday, June 02, 2006
(snip)
The laptop was stolen in late February after an Ernst & Young employee left it inside a locked vehicle, according to Hotels.com Senior Compliance Officer Cathy Bump. Ernst & Young notified Hotels.com of the theft on May 3, and after determining which customers were affected by the data breach, the two companies began sending out letters last week notifying approximately 243,000 customers of the theft.
The laptop contained names, addresses, and credit or debit card information, mostly related to Hotels.com transactions that occurred in 2004, although some customers who made purchases in 2003 and 2002 were also affected.
The computer was stolen somewhere in Texas, though Bump would not name the city where the theft occurred. Hotels.com, which is owned by Expedia, is based in Dallas.
Recent Thefts, Relief
The combination of tough data breach notification laws and stolen laptops is keeping compliance officers such as Bump very busy these days. In May, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs reported that a stolen laptop and external hard drive were to blame in the loss of sensitive information on 26.5 million U.S. veterans. And Fidelity Investments lost confidential information on nearly 200,000 Hewlett-Packard employees earlier this year under similar circumstances.
(snip)
Since the theft, however, Ernst & Young has encrypted data on all laptops within its U.S. and Canadian operations, Kerrigan said.
Ernst & Young is offering one year's free credit monitoring to all Hotels.com customers affected by the breach.
(snip)