HSBC loses disk with private details of 370,000 customers
The disk went missing in February, three months after Paul Gray resigned as chairman of Revenue & Customs over the loss in the post of two child benefit information disks, which contained data on every child in Britain and the bank and national insurance details of their parents.
A spokesman for HSBC said an internal inquiry began as soon as the bank was told the disk had not arrived at its destination.
But Royal Mail said it had not been contacted about the lost disk. “If HSBC requests it, we will of course help with any investigation,” a spokesman said.
The City regulator, the Financial Services Authority, was informed only last week, HSBC admitted.
The bank said the data loss had come about because of a “unique set of circumstances”, blaming the failure of a secure encrypted digital link between HSBC’s Southampton office and reinsurer Swiss Re in Folkestone, Kent. It said the information had been required urgently by Swiss Re and, when the secure link failed, it had been burned on to a disk and put in the Royal Mail’s business post. No courier service was involved, HSBC said.
The FSA has signalled its determination to clamp down on firms not taking reasonable care of customer data. It has imposed heavy fines on companies failing to own up to breaches in data security.
Last December the FSA fined Norwich Union £1.26m for lax security which allowed fraudsters to target life insurance policyholders. The regulator criticised the insurer for failing to address deficiencies swiftly.
Comments
Leave a Reply
