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Chase Bank has sent out data breach notification letters to an undisclosed number of customers after a computer tape with customers' personal information was reported missing from a third-party vendor's storage facility. Tom Kelly, spokesperson for New York-based Chase, the commercial/consumer banking arm of financial giant JPMorgan Chase, says the vendor -- which he would not name -- confirmed it received and maintained the tape, and that its offsite facility had been searched thoroughly after the tape disappeared. Kelly would not say if the data on the tape was encrypted, but says its data can be read only with special equipment and software. "We have no evidence to indicate any of the information has been viewed or used inappropriately," Kelly says. A local ABC News station in Louisville, KY first reported the missing data tape and the notification letters being sent in August. Kelly says the notification letters are being sent out in batches, but would not say how long the tape has been missing, nor what type of customers' information (credit or banking) was on the tape. The electronic files, according to the notification letter, may have included names, addresses and Social Security numbers, but did not include any banking or financial information. Affected customers are being offered a free one-year subscription to the bank's identity protection program, Kelly says. For more information on 2009 data breaches involving financial institutions, see this interactive timeline

Is your company keeping information secure? Are you taking steps to protect personal information? Safeguarding sensitive data in your files and on your computers is just plain good business. After all, if that information falls into the wrong hands, it can lead to fraud or identity theft. A sound data security plan is built on five key principles: * Take stock. Know what personal information you have in your files and on your computers. * Scale down. Keep only what you need for your business. * Lock it. Protect the information in your care. * Pitch it. Properly dispose of what you no longer need. * Plan ahead. Create a plan to respond to security incidents. To learn more about how you can implement these principles in your business, play our interactive tutorial. You'll see and hear about practical steps your business can take to protect personal information. After you experience the tutorial, we hope you'll take advantage of the other resources on this site to educate your employees, customers, and constituents. Order copies of our brochure, Protecting Personal Information: A Guide for Business, or publish an article on information security in your newsletter, magazine, or website. All of the information on this site is in the public domain; we hope you'll share it freely.

You systems administrator knows more about you than you think.

More than one-third of information technology professionals abuse administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues' salary details or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey. Data security company Cyber-Ark surveyed more than 400 senior IT professionals in the United States and Britain, and found that 35 percent admitted to snooping, while 74 percent said they could access information that was not relevant to their role. In a similar survey 12 months ago, 33 percent of IT professionals admitted to snooping. "Employee snooping on sensitive information continues unabated," Udi Mokady, CEO of Cyber-Ark, said in a statement. Cyber-Ark said the most common areas respondents indicated they access are HR records, followed by customer databases, M&A plans, layoff lists and lastly, marketing information. "While seemingly innocuous, (unmanaged privileged) accounts provide workers with the 'keys to the kingdom,' allowing them to access critically sensitive information," Mokady said. When IT professionals were asked what kind of data they would take with them if fired, the survey found a jump compared with a year ago in the number of respondents who said they would take proprietary data and information that is critical to maintaining competitive advantage and corporate security. The survey found a six-fold increase in staff who would take financial reports or merger and acquisition plans, and a four-fold increase in those who would take CEO passwords and research and development plans.

Federal regulators slapped hundreds of small telecommunications providers for not abiding by new rules designed to protect consumer phone records, proposing more than $13 million in total fines. The Federal Communications Commission proposed $20,000 fines on more than 650 small phone, pager and wireless providers Tuesday, accusing them of not filing paperwork that certifies they have put protections in place to protect customer phone data. "I have long stressed the importance of protecting the sensitive information that telecommunications carriers collect about their customers," said Michael Copps, the FCC's interim chairman, in a statement. "The broad nature of this enforcement action hopefully will ensure substantial compliance with our [privacy] rules going forward as the Commission continues to make consumer privacy protection a top priority." In April 2007, the FCC tightened privacy requirements on phone companies in response to consumer complaints about data brokers selling phone records they had obtained illegally through "pretexting," or getting information under false circumstances. The agency required telecom companies to increase security of phone records, requiring customers to provide a password before receiving account information over the phone or online. Phone companies are required to notify customers when changes are made to their accounts or if their information has been improperly accessed. Companies are required to file annual certifications that they have complied with those requirements. The FCC said hundreds of small companies didn't provide the information in 2008, although it noted it was the first year the agency had required the paperwork. The agency warned that future noncompliance could face "more severe penalties."

A consumer reporting agency that failed to properly screen prospective customers and, as a result, sold at least 318 credit reports to identity thieves, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated federal law. Under the settlement, the company and its principal must ensure that they provide credit reports only to legitimate businesses for lawful purposes, use a comprehensive information security program, and obtain independent audits every other year for 20 years. The settlement also imposes a $500,000 penalty but suspends payment due to the defendants' inability to pay. According to the FTC, the defendants use sensitive financial data from other consumer reporting agencies to create reports that landlords use to assess potential renters. These reports contain consumers' names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, bank and credit card account numbers, credit histories, and other personal information. The Commission alleges that the company failed to properly screen new customers. The company allegedly requested only publicly-available information from applicants seeking credit reports, and it did not request supporting documentation to establish that an applicant was actually a landlord renting property. As a result, identity thieves posing as property owners were given an account with unlimited online access to credit reports, and the account was used to access at least 318 reports containing sensitive personal information. The FTC charged the defendants with violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) by furnishing credit reports to persons who did not have a permissible purpose to obtain them, and by failing to maintain reasonable procedures to prevent such impermissible disclosures and to verify their customers' identities and how they intended to use the information. The agency also charged them with violating the FTC Act by failing to employ reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect sensitive consumer inform

DURING the Parliament session on Monday, MP of Ang Mo Kio GRC Ms Lee Bee Wah, asked the Minister of Information, Communications and Arts, Dr Lee Boon Yang, whether a comprehensive privacy law will be introduced to protect the privacy of individuals and their personal data. She also queried about the existing laws which are in place to protect people from spam mails and unauthorised sale of personal information, as well as protecting people whose photographs are posted on blogs and other new media platforms. Dr Lee's reply was: "The Government recognises the importance of data protection and the need to protect personal data. At the same time, we also appreciate the impact of data protection on businesses and the general public. I had previously informed the House that an Inter-Ministry Committee is reviewing Singapore's data protection regime. This review is on-going. We are currently looking into developing a data protection model that can best address Singapore's privacy concerns, commercial requirements and national interest. As data protection is a complex issue with extensive impact on all stakeholders, this review will take some time." With regards to unauthorised Use of personal data, he replied: "While there is currently no generic data protection law, it does not mean that there is no protection of personal data. In fact we have in place strict provisions in sectoral laws, such as the Banking Act and codes for medical professionals to protect sensitive financial and health information. There are also other industry codes of practices against the unauthorised use of personal information. For example, in the telecommunications sector, under the Telecom Competition Code, IDA requires licensees to take reasonable measures to prevent the unauthorised use of End User Service Information. A telecom licensee would be in breach of the Code if it shares with third parties its customers' information that was obtained from the use of its service, without the cust

Woonsocket-based CVS Caremark Corp., the largest U.S. drugstore chain, has agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle federal charges that company employees compromised customer privacy by throwing prescription records and drug bottles into open trash bins. The Federal Trade Commission said its investigation with the Health and Human Services Department followed media reports that trash bins behind CVS pharmacies contained pill bottles bearing patient names, credit-card and insurance information, and Social Security numbers. The company also did not have adequate policies for disposing of that information, and did not sufficiently train employees to dispose of the information properly, the agencies said. The items that were not properly discarded included pill bottles, medication instruction sheets, computer order forms, payroll information, job applications and credit-card and insurance information. Those labels and forms contained personal information including Social Security numbers and credit card and insurance information, and in some cases, driver's license numbers and account numbers. Names of the patients' doctors were also included. The settlement "will restore appropriate privacy protections to tens of millions of people across the country," FTC chairman William Kovacic said in a statement. "It also sends a strong message" that organizations "are required to secure consumers' private information," he said.

More than 6 million current and former customers of online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. will be able to benefit from the settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed over the theft of client contact information. Formal notice of a settlement agreement will be sent to people who used TD Ameritrade's services before mid-September 2007. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco approved a revised version of the settlement agreement earlier this month despite some misgivings about it. Last summer, Walker rejected an earlier version of the deal. Anyone who held an Ameritrade account or provided an e-mail address to the company before Sept. 14, 2007, could benefit from the lawsuit. The database that was breached included information on 6.2 million people. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit said they received unwanted e-mail ads about certain stocks. The ads appeared to be designed to manipulate the value of thinly traded stocks. Ameritrade officials and one of the lead plaintiff's attorneys, Scott Kamber, have said the data theft has not been linked to cases of identity theft. As part of the proposed settlement, the Omaha-based company will pay nearly $1.9 million in legal fees and cover the cost of one year of anti-spam service for the victims. Ameritrade also promised to better protect customer data. Those terms have not changed from the original proposed settlement. But the new agreement will more clearly state that Ameritrade customers were at risk of identity theft, and it will preserve customers' ability to pursue identity theft claims against Ameritrade. Most of the changes to the agreement happened because the Texas Attorney General's Office and a former named plaintiff objected to the previous deal. In his order, the judge questioned whether the settlement does enough to benefit Ameritrade clients whose information was stolen. "The court is particularly concerned that TD Ameritrade has agreed to pay the class counsel $1.87 million and yet the

"In light of a spike in identity theft and the frequency with which personal information is stored on portable devices, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) have expanded Generally Accepted Privacy Principles (GAPP) to include protocols for securing and disposing of personal information. "Safeguarding personal information is one of the most challenging responsibilities facing an organization, whether such information pertains to employees or customers," said Everett C. Johnson, CPA, chair of AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force and a past international president of ISACA, a global information technology association. "We've updated the criteria of our privacy principles to minimize the risks to personal information." GAPP offers guidance and best practices on securing portable devices, breach management and ensuring continued effectiveness of privacy controls. The guidance additionally covers disposal and destruction of personal information. The principles are designed for chief privacy officers, executive management, compliance officers, legal counsel, CPAs and CAs offering technology advisory services. "Portable tools such as laptops and memory sticks provide convenience to employees but appropriate measures must be put in place to secure them and the data they contain," said Donald Sheehy, CA.CISA, CIPP/C, associate partner with Deloitte (Canada) and a member of the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force. "We must stay abreast of technological advances to assure that proper measures are put into place to defend against any new threats." Created by the AICPA/CICA Privacy Task Force, GAPP is designed to help an organization's management team assess an existing privacy program or address privacy obligations and risks. The principles provide a framework for CPAs and CAs to offer privacy services to their clients and employers, such as advisory services, privacy risk assessments and attestation or

Top House and Senate Democrats are working on legislation that would prevent online marketers from sharing Web-surfing information unless Internet users allowed them to. That's according to House Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee chairman Rick Boucher (D.-Va.), who told Multichannel News that such a bill was in the works and was one of his top legislative priorities. The issue of online behavioral marketing has gained traction recently, spurred by privacy concerns and by media companies' need to find new ways for advertisers to reach aggregated audiences at a time of fragmented viewing and multiplying delivery platforms. Boucher's predecessor atop the committee, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), held a hearing last fall on the issue and helped quash a test by ad-tracking company NebuAd and cable operator Charter Communications. In an interview, Boucher said he was teaming with Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), ranking member of his subcommittee, and Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking full committee member, on a bill that would apply "across the board" to behavioral advertising and data collection by Web sites. "The goal would be to give the Internet user a sense that information about him that is collected by Web sites is well understood by the user, so he has an opportunity to know what is collected," Boucher said. "He would then have an opportunity to act in a way that prevents that Web site using that information to market him personally, and an even broader opportunity to prevent the transfer of that information about him to third parties." Boucher envisions a combination of opt-in and opt-out requirements. "Opt-in would apply where the information is conveyed to third parties," he said, while "opt out would apply where the Web site that collects the information is using that information directly to market the customers from whom it is collected." Center for Digital Democracy executive director Jeff Chester was please

A health care industry coalition on Monday released a prescriptive security framework that organizations can use to safeguard patient records as they increasingly move online. The framework, released by the Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) -- which represents health care providers, pharmacies, insurers, biotech firms and medical device manufacturers -- is based on well-known standards such as COBIT, NIST and ISO 270001. But this is the first benchmark developed specifically for protecting health data. "It's tailored to protecting health information right out of the gate," Michael Wilson, vice president and chief information security officer of McKesson, the largest U.S. pharmaceutical distributor, told SCMagazineUS.com on Monday. "It's just a different sort of data. It's still structured [like other verticals], but there's a lot more of it in health care." The framework was created to improve adoption rates with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and increase patient confidence in the security of their information. It also arrives on the heels of the new $787 billion economic stimulus bill, about $20 billion of which is earmarked to encourage health care organizations to adopt electronic health records as a way to reduce the number of medical errors and save money. The stimulus bill, in itself, contains srict privacy and security regulations for patient information. The standards took about 18 months to devise and can be implemented by organizations of any size, according to HITRUST. "2009 will be a turning point for information security in the health care industry, when organizations will begin implementing the framework...and create a cascading effect that will impact and benefit the entire health care ecosystem," Daniel Nutkis, CEO of HITRUST, said in news release. Wilson said the framework also will enable companies such as McKesson to show their customers and business partners that they are taki

There were only two of us on the graveyard shift. "If it's not locked up," a colleague at my first newspaper declared as he snatched a folder of papers from our boss' desk and strode towards the office copying machine, "Xerox it." (Old-tongue for photocopy.) That was long before CDs, and USB drives and, certainly, iPods, but the lesson was the same. If you are stupid about protecting company information, shame on you. I guess that's the message behind the "revelation" released in a survey this week that the majority of people who leave their jobs, voluntarily or otherwise, are taking company information with them. Lots of it. My reaction was the same as when I watched my fellow journalist grab and copy whatever it was that had been so carelessly left in the open. I shrugged. (We are by nature an overly curious species, and that overrides our normally dominant ethics gene.) Data Loss Risks During Downsizing conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Symantec, was apparently designed to test the hypothesis that in this dire economy (ominous music in background), former employees are going to take important company information out the door. And, in fact, the poll of 945 former employees who left their jobs or were dismissed in the last 12 months showed that 59% stole company data. What kind of data? Email lists, non-financial business information and customer information, including contact lists. Not the secret formula for Coke, not the clinical trial reports on a cure for cancer, no insider information on proposed mergers and acquisitions. Not even a few thousand credit card numbers. Hardly worthy of shock and dismay. This is what a lot of people do when they leave jobs. Are they supposed to? No. Is it wrong? Yeah, but it's sort of like cheating on taxes. Folks rationalize it in a variety of ways, or it just doesn't weigh heavily enough on their conscience to set off an internal alarm. Most of the people who took data - 79% â

The Federal Trade Commission today approved a final consent order settling claims that CVS Caremark violated customers' privacy and the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) when it failed to dispose of records properly last year. Earlier this year, CVS Caremark agreed to settle FTC charges that it failed to take reasonable and appropriate security measures to protect the sensitive financial and medical information of its customers and employees, in violation of federal law. In a separate but related agreement, the company's pharmacy chain also has agreed to pay $2.25 million to resolve Department of Health and Human Services allegations that it violated HIPAA regulations. "This is a case that will restore appropriate privacy protections to tens of millions of people across the country," said FTC chairman William Kovacic following the settlement. "It also sends a strong message to other organizations that possess consumers' protected personal information. They are required to secure consumers' private information." Under the final consent order, CVS Caremark is required to rebuild its security and confidentiality program, which will be audited every two years for the next 20 years. The HHS settlement requires the company to develop a new training program to instruct employees on how to handle patient data.

As if banks didn't have enough on their plates with compliance and regulation on the federal front, come May 1, they will have to be mindful of strict new rules coming from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts around data security. The Massachusetts Data Security Regulations are perhaps like no other in terms of their depth and scope. During a teleconference, attorneys from the privacy and data security practice of the law firm Goodwin Procter (Boston) described this very detailed, all-encompassing set of rules designed to keep consumers' personal data safe. They go beyond the rules of other states and the federal government that simply require companies to notify their customers of theft of their personal information. "Personal information," for the purposes of the regulation, is described as someone's first and last name or first initial and last name, in combination with Social Security Number, driver's license number or financial account number. At its core, the regulation states that companies, including banks, that handle the personal data of a Massachusetts resident must show they have in place a comprehensive, written information security program with heightened security procedures around how this information is handled. The rules also extend to entities' service providers and the degree to which they too much show they comply with the Massachusetts rules of handling data on residents. Companies have until May 1 to amend their vendor contracts to reflect this and until Jan. 1, 2010 to certify their vendors comply. Furthermore, companies must comply with these rules even if they do not have a single office in the Bay State or if they are in an already heavily regulated industry, like financial services. As long as customers in businesses' databases reside in Massachusetts, those companies are affected by the rules. According to partner Deborah Birnbach, this is some of the most intrusive legislation as it relates to the operation of businesses. "It requires

A privacy researcher is urging Netflix to cancel its next research contest, before it results in potentially millions of dollars in damages for invasion of its customers' privacy. "Netflix should cancel this new, irresponsible contest," Paul Ohm wrote in a blog affiliated with Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. On Monday, the company awarded $1 million to the winners of its first competition, aimed at developing technology to improve its ability to predict what movies its customers will like. Ohm worries the information the company is about to release as test data for the second contest isn't as anonymous as Netflix may think.

Now that behavioral targeting has become more pervasive (and more effective), it is being talked about not only by publishers and advertisers, but also by privacy advocates -- organizations like the NAI and IAB and, in Washington, the FTC. At issue is if BT players are doing enough to disclosure to consumers how BT works and offering them the opportunity to opt out of being tracked by BT vendors and publishers. There has been much discussion about how to regulate behavioral marketers; but no solution that satisfies everyone. The BT industry so far has contended that website privacy policies are sufficient disclosure since many of them contain links to opts out opportunities like the NAI site. Google and Bluekai have announced 'preference pages' or registries that allow Web users to say what type of BT they are interested in receiving. But, the other, more common option is to put that information in the Privacy Policy of the site. But the problem with that is that no matter where disclosures are placed on the service provider's site, most people won't ever see them. How will a customer visiting Retail SiteX know that Company Y is going to use their browsing behavior to later display relevant ads to them as they surf the Web on Network Z? The average customer won't. The only way a customer will know what forms of BT advertisers are using is if the advertisers themselves tell them. I think that it's time for advertisers to step up in this privacy debate. Thus far the pressure for disclosure has been placed on networks, behavioral marketing providers and publishers. The key players in those industries have done a good job of becoming more transparent (though there is still work ahead of us), while advertisers haven't been asked to do anything. Advertisers are clearly benefiting from behavioral marketing, and its time they disclosed what type of behavioral marketing they participate in, and allow customers to opt-out. How they do this is open for discussion: Tag each

I. INTRODUCTION The globalization revolution is undeniably well underway. Some of the primary leaders of the revolution are the off-shoring outsourcers of the world in search of readily available talent at prices below what is available in the traditional geographical outsourcing centers. Certainly, U.S. companies seeking information technology resources--as well as those looking for human resources to support the ever-growing customer care requirements of their business--are at the forefront of the movement. Some of those companies are seeking their own solutions, but many have turned to business process outsourcing companies for assistance. Business process outsourcing is, generally speaking, the contracting of a specific business task to a third party service provider. Processes that are best suited to be outsourced are those that a company requires but does not depend upon to maintain its position in the marketplace. There are two primary categories of business process outsourcing. One category is commonly referred to as "back office outsourcing" which includes internal business functions such as billing or purchasing. The other category is commonly referred to as "front office outsourcing" which includes customer-related services such as marketing, customer contact management, and technical support. The globalization of business in general has resulted in the need for companies to be able to provide support to their customers in many different languages. At the same time, developments in technology have provided the ability for business process outsourcers to provide a cost effective global delivery platform. The convergence of the need for a portfolio of services to be sourced globally with the ability of business process outsourcers to do so on a cost effective basis has driven the outsourcers to geographic locations previously ignored by most business sectors. By many estimates, there are currently off-shore outsourcing vendors in more than 175 different

Federal regulators on Tuesday met to hear about whether the benefits of cloud computing justify increased regulation, as privacy activists claim, or whether such an approach would do more harm than good. "We need to be smarter about dealing with technology, and cloud computing is posing (a) risk for us," said Hugh Stephenson, deputy director for international consumer protection at the Federal Trade Commission's Office of International Affairs. The FTC convened the two-day meeting in its offices here, which follows a series of similar workshops held in previous years on topics like spam, privacy, and behavioral advertising. The agency may file lawsuits to halt "unfair or deceptive acts or practices," meaning that if cloud computing is not unfair or deceptive, the FTC would likely not have jurisdiction. To secure personal information on the cloud, regulators may have to answer questions such as which entities have jurisdiction over data as it flows across borders, whether governments can access that information as it changes jurisdiction, and whether there is more risk in storing personal information in data centers that belong to a single entity rather than multiple data centers. The current panoply of laws at the state, national, and international level have had insufficient results; FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour cited a 2008 PricewaterhouseCoopers information security survey (PDF) in which 71 percent of organizations queried said they did not have an accurate inventory of where personal data for employees and customers is stored. With data management practices that are not always clear and are subject to change, companies that offer cloud-computing services are steering consumers into dangerous territory, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Already, problems of identity theft are skyrocketing, he said, and without more regulation, data management services may experience a collapse analogous to that

A list of user names and passwords for customers of Comcast, one of the nation's largest Internet service providers, sat unprotected on the Web for the last two months. The list was 8,000 lines long, but Comcast said late Monday that just 700 of those lines contained information for active customer accounts. Kevin Andreyo, an educational technology specialist in Reading, Pa., and a professor at Wilkes University, came across the list Monday on Scribd, a document-sharing Web site. Mr. Andreyo was reading a recent article in PC World entitled "People Search Engines: They Know Your Dark Secrets… And Tell Anyone," when he was inspired to find out what information about him was online. He searched for his own e-mail address on the search engine Pipl. The list on Scribd was one of four results, and it also included his password, which was a riff on his love for a local sports team. Statistics on Scribd indicated that the list, which was uploaded by someone with the user name vuthanhan2004, had been viewed over 345 times and had been downloaded 27 times.

Privacy & security are individual rights and responsibilities, not just corporate or governmental responsibilities. Reliance on technology is bound to fail without motivation for all involved to find mutual benefits.

Identity theft and security is always in the spotlight through the constant stream of news stories about companies losing confidential customer or client data, such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, health histories and so forth. These "breaking news" stories now seem to happen so frequently that we scarcely pay attention to them unless, of course, we are directly impacted by them. They have, however, heightened the public awareness and have even spawned new identity protection businesses. Information technology companies rightly react to this by developing new technologies to improve security and eagerly market these to CIOs as a way to protect the personal information of their customers and clients. While we should use these appropriately, we can't rely just on technology for identity protection. While some of these security incidents involve someone hacking into a system, many involve a human failing. Examples include a laptop with confidential information being lost or stolen and employees e-mailing sensitive data to their personal e-mail accounts so they can work on it from home.