July 12, 2005 - SCVO highlights failings with tape backup

"Backing up your information is protecting your business. It is said that 80% of businesses in the World Trade Tower attacks went out of business because they did not have backups of their systems and therefore they could not re-establish their businesses.

All businesses should have a disaster recovery plan (business continuity plan), to respond to events such as fires, computer system crashes, natural disasters, criminal acts, and so on. A fundamental component of a disaster recovery plan is the ability to quickly recover data critical to the operation of the business."

The article highlights available backup procedures and potential issues with tape backup. Click to read the entire article.

Source: SCVO

June 06, 2005 - Citigroup lose backup tape

Citigroup said Monday that personal information on 3.9 million consumer lending customers of its CitiFinancial subsidiary was lost by UPS while in transit to a credit bureau -- the biggest breach of customer or employee data reported so far.

Citigroup, the nation's biggest financial services company, said that UPS lost the tapes while shipping them to a credit bureau in Texas.

The tapes covered CitiFinancial customers and about 50,000 customers with closed accounts from CitiFinancial Retail Services. Customers of CitiFinancial's auto and mortgage businesses were not affected.

Source: CNN

May 02, 2005 - Time Warner loses employee data

Personal information for 600,000 current and former Time Warner employees has been lost, the company announced on Monday, potentially setting the stage for one of the largest cases yet of identity theft.

Time Warner said the mishap occurred on March 22, when data storage company Iron Mountain was transporting its backup tapes to a storage facility away from its offices. The company lost the tapes while in transit, said Kathy McKiernan, a Time Warner spokeswoman.

Source: CNN

Feburary 25, 2005 - Bank of America loses customer records

A "small" number of backup tapes with records detailing the financial information of government employees were lost in shipment to a backup center, Bank of America said on Friday.

The tapes contained information on the customers and accounts of the U.S. government's SmartPay charge card program, which has more than 2.1 million members and annual transactions totaling more than $21 billion, according to the General Services Administration. Reports have pegged the number of cards affected at 1.2 million.

Source: CNN