resource center
  See your link here
|
Subscribe to Computerworld IDG News Service -
Citigroup Inc. is advising some customers to take steps to protect their identity following the disappearance of a package containing credit information on 3.9 million of the company's CitiFinancial Branch Network customers.
The data, which contains customer names, Social Security numbers and payment history information, was stored on computer tapes being sent via United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) to a credit bureau, Citigroup said in a statement yesterday (See story). Citibank is now mailing a letter to affected customers, advising them of the situation and offering a number of tips on how they can prevent identity theft.
One such tip: "Do not send sensitive information unless it is encrypted on a secure Web site."
New York-based Citibank appears to be taking that piece of advice to heart. Beginning next month, it will begin sending credit bureau data "electronically in encrypted form," the company said.
In addition to data on U.S. CitiFinancial Branch Network customers, the tapes contain information on closed CitiFinancial Retail Services accounts. Citibank has no reason to believe that any of its missing data have been used inappropriately, the statement said.
Because of the sensitivity of the missing information, Citigroup and UPS have informed "a number of law enforcement agencies and regulatory authorities," said Norman Black, a UPS spokesman.
UPS is still trying to understand how the package went missing, Black said. "We're delivering on average 14.1 million packages every day and the technology that we have today is such that it is very unusual for us to find ourselves in a situation where we literally can't find a package," he said. "We have to determine... what did go wrong so we can fix it."
The package containing the unencrypted tapes was shipped from Weehawken, N.J., on May 2, destined for an Experian Information Solutions Inc. office in Allen, Texas. Experian informed Citigroup that it had not received the package on May 20, and after consulting with UPS, Citigroup on May 27 notified the U.S. Secret Service that the package had been lost, a Citigroup spokesman said.
This marks the second time in recent months that tapes containing large quantities of personal information have gone missing in transit. In March, Time Warner Inc. blamed data storage company Iron Mountain Inc. for the disappearance of a shipment containing details on about 600,000 current and former employees (See story).
IDG.net
Speeding business innovation with HP Data Center Transformation solutions
Data center transformation enables your IT organization to focus more on business priorities and innovation by decreasing spending on maintenance and management by...
Four Principles for Reducing Storage TCO
(Source: Hitachi Data Systems) Difficult economic times require new strategies for reducing costs. Where storage technology and economics meet, there are...
HP Data Center Transformation Solutions
CIOs today are challenged to respond to economic and business pressures, to change from being cost centers to becoming strategic business enablers. There...
Boost your CAE productivity, and break-away from the pack
(Source: Sun) Join Clemson University as they present their groundbreaking engineering simulations research at their Computational Center for Mobility Systems. Dr. James Leylek,...
Using Symark PowerBroker™ to Enrich Your Organization's RBAC Model
The essential notion of Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for IT security administration is establishing permissions based on the functional roles within the enterprise,...
Deduplication and Other Strategies for Protecting Your Assets with the Veritas NetBackup Platform
(Source: Symantec) Many companies find their backup and storage resources strained by data growth and increased regulatory requirements for data retention. In today's...
Using VMware Site Recovery Manager to Simplify DR
(Source: NetApp) Nothing is scarier than the prospect of having to recover an entire site after a disaster. VMware® Site Recovery Manager (SRM)...
Controlling Email and File Server Growth and Costs with Intelligent Archiving
(Source: Symantec) According to IDC 54% of the storage capacity added by organizations in 2008 will be dedicated to the storage of file-based...
NetApp and VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Storage Best Practices
(Source: NetApp) NetApp has been providing advanced storage features to VMware ESX solutions since the product began shipping in 2001. During that time,...
Maximize Storage Assets with Thin Provisioning, Tiered Storage, and Cluster File Systems
(Source: Symantec) Thin Provisioning is an opportunity to immediately optimize your storage systems and make more capacity available to your applications. In order...
Sign up to receive updates on the latest Storage resources
CIO
Computerworld
CSO
DEMO
GamePro
Games.net
IDC
IDG
IDG Connect
IDG Knowledge Hub
IDG TechNetwork
IDG Ventures
IDG.net
InfoWorld
ITwhitepapers
ITworld
JavaWorld
LinuxWorld
Macworld
Network World
PC World
The Industry Standard
Copyright © 1994 - 2009 Computerworld Inc. All
rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium
without express written permission ofComputerworld Inc. is prohibited. Computerworld and Computerworld.com and the respective logos are trademarks of International Data Group Inc. |
