A laptop which reportedly contained the personal pension details of all UK Vodafone staff has been stolen from an employee of the accountancy firm, Deloitte. The laptop was also thought to contain details of staff working for several other companies, although Deloitte has declined to reveal which companies are involved.
"Vodafone is extremely concerned about the breach in security of our employees' personal information," Vodafone said in a statement. "Deloitte is a highly reputable firm and also sincerely regrets that this opportunistic theft has happened. We have written to our employees assuring them that we are thoroughly investigating the matter."
One of the affected companies, Network Rail confirmed that the employee details were encrypted while on the laptop - and did not contain home addresses or bank details.
"The laptop was protected by a number of security measures, including startup password, operating system user ID/password authentication and encryption," Deloitte said, adding "we believe that the likelihood of unauthorised access to the data held on this laptop is remote due to the opportunistic nature of the theft and the security controls."
Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staff Association - representing the Network Rail staff - said there should be an inquiry because of the large number of people whose personal details have been lost.
"There will be a lot of worried railway employees who will be concerned about where this information will eventually end up. We need to know precisely what information has gone missing and how security will be sharpened in the future."
Posted to the site on 14th October 2008
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/34121.php