Software company
Hummingbird was building a document management system for the Texas
Guaranteed Student Loan company and took the details of 1.3 million
TGSL customers, decrypted them and stored them on new hardware.
That hardware has since been lost.
The equipment contains the social security numbers of the people
named. The lost hardware is believed to require a password to gain
access to it. "Hummingbird believes that any misuse of the data is
extremely unlikely," said a Hummingbird statement.
Meanwhile, a lost laptop has caused data on 243,000 Hotels.com
customers to be lost. The website and Ernst & Young informed
customers by letter of the loss.
"Recently, Hotels.com was informed by its outside auditor, Ernst
& Young, that one of Ernst & Young's employees had his
laptop computer stolen," Hotels.com wrote in its letter to
customers. "The computer contained certain information about
customer transactions with Hotels.com and other sites. This
information may have included your name, address and some credit or
debit card information you provided at that time."
The error is unlikely to bolster Ernst & Young's security
credentials. It announced just days ago that it was launching a
fraud investigations service on a global scale, bringing together
over 1,000 specialist professionals.
Reports in recent weeks have revealed that Ernst & Young has
lost machines with data on people connected with Sun, IBM, Cisco,
BP and Nokia.
