Fidelity loses laptop, 196,000 HP employees' data lost

Seems like Fidelity doesn't really take the security of its customers' data very seriously. Last week, a laptop containing the personal data of nearly 200,000 current and former Hewlett-Packard employees whose retirement accounts are maintained by Fidelity was stolen.

Fidelity and HP are keeping mum on many of the details, such as where the laptop was stolen from, but revealed that it wasn't on the premises of either company. I am therefore going to extrapolate that it was probably an employee taking the laptop home, or on a business trip. Further, the article does not say if the data was encrypted, but Fidelity claims that the 'license for the software which contained the data has expired. As a result, the scrambled data is difficult to interpret... it is in a form that is generally unusable.'

Hmmm. I am already disappointed that Fidelity sends customer data to India, a country which has ineffective criminal penalties for data that is stolen or illegally sold. Now I find out that employees can walk out of the office with a laptop containing sensitive information of its customers.

Your customers deserve better than this, Fidelity!

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