By John Oates for The Register. This story has
been reproduced with permission.
The disc, containing information on mortage customers, should
have been encrypted before being sent, the bank said, and should
have been sent via secure courier rather than the normal postal
service. It blamed human error for the problem, but said it
believed the disc was genuinely lost rather than stolen.
An HBOS spokesperson told ComputerWorld: "The disk
would usually be encrypted. Unfortunately, due to human error on
this occasion the usual policy was not followed. We apologise to
our customers for this."
The spokeswoman said procedures had been changed and said a
recent string of data breaches were unrelated.
The bank was in trouble in March for losing customer data, and
in January it accidentally posted details of 75,000 customers to a
woman from Aberdeen who asked for a copy of her bank statement.
Also in March, the Information Commissioner named and shamed HBOS,
along with 10 other banks, for dumping customer statements in
pavement bins.
More from ComputerWorld here.
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Register 2007
