Fergie's Tech Blog

Banking's Data Security Crisis

Andy Greenberg writes on Forbes.com:

Countrywide Financial may have become a poster child for U.S. financial institutions ruined by poisonous subprime loans--but junk assets, it turns out, weren't the only element of Countrywide's inner workings that were rotten.

So, allegedly, was one senior financial analyst in the company's subprime mortgage division. According to the reports of FBI officials who arrested him in August, 36-year-old Rene Rebollo spent his Sunday nights last summer copying a total of more than 2 million of Countrywide's customer records to a flash drive and selling the data to identity thieves.

Rebollo's case isn't as unique as banks would like to believe. If the wounded financial industry and its confused customers weren't suffering enough, add another crisis to the list: Cybersecurity and privacy analysts say American banks and financial services organizations are facing a major spike in data breaches, many of which are caused by company insiders siphoning sensitive data for profit.

posted by Fergie @ 11/21/2008 12:23:00 PM