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Tuesday, June 07, 2005Computer tapes vanish in transit.
 Citigroup found out recently that tapes full of sensitive data can and do go missing. Their corporate statement U.S.: CitiFinancial Statement on Lost Data Tapes carries the news that details of 3.9 Million CitiFinancial Branch Network customers have gone missing while in the care of UPS. The tapes were being sent to a credit bureau. Only now are they considering data encryption.I'm sure that's a comfort for the millions of customers now recieving the letter advising them on techniques to avoid identity theft. What's it cost citibank? I doubt if we'll ever know but consider just the letter to 3.9m customers, and a free account with the credit agency Equifax, that looks close to £50 to me at least; £200M in total plus lawyers fees, advertising, insurance premiums..... We often are asked to advise companies on the best practice for creating and managing backups. We of course recomend a decent tape backup solution, TapeWare, and a rigorous regime of nightly tape swaps. We also advise that tapes are stored securely off-site at the same time we strongly discourage employers from asking employees to take tapes home ...it's just too risky and you shouldn't put your staff in that vulnerable position, use a secuity company instead. unless that's encrypted of course. Given the experience of citigroup it looks as though you should think about encrypting the data regardless of who's looking after it. Related Links Network File and Folder encryption Utimaco LANCrypt Hard disk encryption Utimaco SafeGuard Easy posted by Robert Campbell 3:19 PM
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