Criminals have got private data that contained names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and benefits information of 5,800 former Eastman Kodak Co. workers. Those records were on a password-protected laptop that was stolen from a consultant's locked car trunk. The laptop belonged to Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm working with Kodak on the administration of its employee benefit plans.
Kodak officials have no reason to believe that identity theft has occurred. Nevertheless Kodak sent letters detailing the theft to the affected workers, all of whom left the company within the last three years. The laptop did not include former workers' bank and credit card account numbers, home or work addresses or refer to employment with Kodak. Hewitt will pay for one year of free credit monitoring for the workers, and up to $50,000 in identity theft insurance, which includes access to fraud resolution representatives.
Laptops are very attractive for criminals of all kinds. Some time ago a laptop was stolen from Omega World Travel of Fairfax, Va., which is one of the largest travel companies in the Washington area and does extensive business with government agencies. Travel account information for as many as 80,000 Justice Department employees has been stored on the laptop. As a result the data included names and account numbers from travel account credit cards issued to government employees by J.P Morgan Chase & Co. and its subsidiary Bank One Corp. were compromised.
Also laptop thefts were reported in universities throughout USA. For instance, a laptop with records of more than 98,000 people has been stolen from the University of California at Berkeley. It puts about 100,000 students at risk of ID theft.
“I wonder when business and non-profit organizations will be serious in secure storing of private data. It is obvious, that all clients' and workers' confidential records must be encrypted if they copied on mobile devices", — comments Denis Zenkin, the Marketing Director of InfoWatch company.
“Criminals like laptops because they cost quite a lot in themselves and from time to time contain private data that can be sold for a great amount of money. Executives should pay more attention to the IT-security of using mobile devices in corporative environment and reliable protection of mobile data outside the office", — he adds.
Source: Democrat and Chronicle
