A U.S. call center that listed the wrong fax number on a form was responsible for private information being sent to completely the wrong people for three months. According to experts at InfoWatch, it is a common problem, making the existence of effective IT security systems at call centers an important selling point in the outsourcing sector.
At least 144 Texas applications for Medicaid and other kinds of assistance poured into a fax machine at a Seattle warehouse for more than three months. The faxes, which included tax forms, pay stubs, and medical reports, apparently ended up there because outsourcing giant Accenture listed the wrong phone number on a form, the IT Compliance Institute reports.
The problem of the private data going astray was not addressed until the Houston Chronicle made inquiries about it. The recipient repeatedly tried to contact the senders, but only managed to reach people in a large call center who had no idea who sent the faxes. The outsourcing company Accenture tried to justify the mistake by emphasizing the successful transmission of 215,000 other faxes.
“Human error is one of the most serious sources of risk in any organization. One misplaced number and hundreds of confidential messages are sent to the wrong recipient. In call centers this problem becomes more acute because there are large amounts of relatively unqualified employees. The management in those companies ought to pay much more attention to safeguards for private data because an effective system of internal security has become a competitive advantage in the outsourcing world,” say Denis Zenkin, marketing director at InfoWatch.
Source: IT Compliance Institute
