Iron Mountain has once again lost back-up tapes containing client information. This time Long Island Rail Road employees have been affected. In a similar incident last July the company lost tapes with financial records belonging to several U.S. banks and in March 2005 it lost the private data of 600,000 Time Warner workers. According to InfoWatch experts, it is high time the company thought of compulsory encryption for all the data on its back-up tapes.
Iron Mountain, the data protection and storage company, has reported the loss of back-up tapes belonging to two of its clients, Silicon.com writes. The tapes contained private information about Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) employees and less sensitive data from another firm, whose name was withheld.
The tapes with the LIRR private data were lost at the beginning of April during transportation. An investigation into the incident, carried out jointly by Iron Mountain, the New York Police Department and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, found that the tapes were most probably lost accidentally rather than targeted specifically by criminals.
New York state law stipulates that businesses must notify all those affected in cases of private data leaks. As a result, all former, current and retired LIRR employees were informed of the recent incident at Iron Mountain.
It is not the first time Iron Mountain has lost back-up tapes with information on its clients. For example, in June 2005 the company lost tapes with information from several U.S. banks. It resulted in millions of Americans facing the threat of identity theft, while the tapes themselves have still not been found. In March 2005 the company also lost the personal data of 600,000 former and current Time Warner employees.
“Iron Mountain doesn’t want to implement the necessary encryption procedures on its back-up tapes because it will require additional investment, slow down and hinder the process of copying records and will ultimately be reflected in the price of the company’s services. Instead, the company offers a separate service for copying and delivering sensitive information. Of course, clients will have to pay for a higher level of security. Those who can’t afford it will have to entrust their private data to companies on the most basic conditions, which often results in the loss of tapes,” points out Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch.
Source: Silicon.com
