Information security analytics

British journalists have identified two Indians who buy tens of thousands of private client data records from call centers before selling them to the highest bidder. According to experts at InfoWatch, the ability to safeguard private details is already becoming a major selling point for outsourcing companies.

Citibank has taken two former employees to court after they sent private client information to their personal e-mail accounts shortly before they started working for a rival bank. Experts at InfoWatch point out that this is one of the most basic types of insider-related leaks: the private data is sent to a personal e-mail and then taken by the insider to his new workplace.

Switzerland has adopted the Basel II Accord and it is due to come into force next January. According to experts at InfoWatch, Swiss banks could gain a significant competitive edge as a result of adhering to the Basel II provisions so quickly.

A laptop computer that contained, of all things, a police security plan for the Labour Party conference was stolen last week. It meant a complete revision of all the security measures for the political gathering. According to experts at InfoWatch, there is something far wrong when even the law enforcement agencies do not understand that confidential information stored on a laptop needs to be encrypted.

The US Commerce Department has announced that over the last five years it has lost over 1,000 laptop computers, with a quarter of them thought to have contained personal data. It appears that most of the data was unencrypted.

Two thirds of British banks are only willing to do the “bare minimum” to meet the requirements of Basel II in order to avoid problems with regulatory bodies.

MDC, the owner of the Velcom mobile phone operator that was the subject of a data breach earlier this month, has stressed that Belarusian law fails to protect people’s privacy and that a subcontractor was to blame for the leak of a database of subscriber records. Experts at InfoWatch point out that, in terms of privacy, legislation is far superior in neighboring Russia.

An insider has been arrested in connection with a leak of private data on 38,000 US veterans. The suspect was a temporary worker for Unisys who had access to the company’s hardware. According to experts at InfoWatch, companies often underestimate the danger of subcontractors.

The EU and Basel Committee member countries are supposed to start using advanced approaches for measuring operational and credit risks from the end of 2007, but in the US a handful of the largest banks are only due to comply with Basel II as of January 2009. This could lead to a host of problems for banks who have operations in both Europe and the US. Moreover, according to experts at InfoWatch, this could affect both the reputation and competitiveness of US banks.

Velcom, one of the biggest mobile telephone operators in Belarus, has compromised yet another database of private client information. Since 2002 at least six versions of the company’s database have been leaked, and each time the records have been more extensive.