Great Britain. A worker at City Council in Belfast has compromised the personal data of his colleagues.
The database leaked from City Council in Belfast contains complete information about the workers at the Council. Irish News reports that the incident occurred because of the carelessness of an employee. A City Hall employee asked for contact details for members of Council. By mistake, the person responsible for this inquiry sent e-mails and work telephone numbers along with the entire database of personal data to all staff at City Council. The database contained banking information, home addresses, personal telephone numbers, national insurance numbers and vehicle registrations.
At City Council, it was announced that all victims were already informed of the incident and advised to cancel their credit cards in order to avoid fraud. Fifty-one members of City Council were affected by the leak.
Nikolai Fedotov, head InfoWatch analyst: “In this day and time, it is no wonder that instead of a list of ten lines, one attaches a database of one one-hundredth of a megabyte. It was a mistake with the mouse. Or it the file itself was wrong. If a person is asked to bring a paper list, would he be able to drag in a filing cabinet instead of a single piece of looseleaf? A computer searches a vast amount of information with such ease, that it often becomes the reason for a leak. Although, even the most simple DLP system immediately suspects something wrong when it detects such a large email attachment.”
