Five tapes containing the private details of 2.6 million Circuit City credit card holders were thrown away after being mistaken for trash. According to experts at InfoWatch, the company should have insured itself against such risks by encrypting its back-up data.
The credit card provider Chase Card Services has announced that staff at the company mistakenly threw away five computer tapes with the personal details of 2.6 million former and current Circuit City credit card holders. The tapes are believed to have been buried at a landfill site in July.
A Chase Card Services representative reported the incident to police, as well as telling the affected clients that the magnetic tapes were most probably destroyed. Nevertheless, authorities are carrying out an investigation to confirm that the tapes were actually destroyed. The company is offering one year of free credit monitoring to people whose Social Security numbers were on the tapes.
The company is currently reviewing its security policy with the aim of avoiding similar incidents involving human error in the future. The incident was only discovered a few weeks later after a scheduled security systems audit. Time was also needed to ascertain whether the tapes contained private information and how many people were affected.
“Virtually nobody is safe from human error, but the subsequent risks can be minimized. For example, to avoid the risk of tapes with private data ending up in the wrong hands, all back-up data should be encrypted. Otherwise, any data leaving the corporate network is tantamount to a breach,” believes Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch.
Source: ComputerWorld
