Customer data leaked through file sharing networks?

September 24th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gqCosrdLVqek0gxcf9tnSNXSZ0Qw

NEW YORK (AP) — Three spreadsheets containing more than 5,000 Social Security numbers and other personal details about customers of ABN Amro Mortgage Group were inadvertently leaked over an online file-sharing network by a former employee.

Tiversa Inc., a Pittsburgh company that offers data-leakage protection services, traced the origins of the ABN data to a Florida computer with the BearShare software installed.

BearShare, LimeWire and scores of other programs are designed to distribute and find songs, movies and other files over the Gnutella file-sharing network.

Tiversa Chief Executive Robert Boback said file-sharing programs are commonly misconfigured to share documents their owners never intended to make public.

This highlights the need for data security within an organization, obviously it’s an issue that’s industry wide, and regardless of what processes there are, you can only limit your liability, your exposure so far, ensuring though that you follow due diligence, IT governance is a way of not only (ideally) preventing it, as well as showing from an audit/liability/compliance angle that you did everything possible to contain customer data. Remember a small article discussing customer data loss can easily end up in the news, leading to damage of your brand, your business.

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