AU: Computershare ‘breach’ a lesson in information larceny (UPDATED)

Leonie Woods reports:

The privacy and financial records of millions of shareholders who use Computershare’s global share registry system were placed at risk this year when a Boston employee quit the company, allegedly taking with her thousands of pages of highly sensitive and confidential documents. [See UPDATE below].

The employee resigned in September last year but did not return a work laptop for three weeks. When Computershare retrieved the laptop, the company claimed internal documents and emails had been copied without authorisation to a USB flash drive and later to the employee’s home computer.

What is most disturbing about the case is that the woman was formerly employed in Computershare’s risk management and internal audit department, which is responsible for scrutinising the vulnerabilities of the group’s internal systems.

It is understood forensic technicians employed by Computershare later purged the documents from the home computer and retrieved one of two USB devices in the woman’s possession.

[…]

The US court heard that one of the documents detailed Computershare’s business and operational processes, ”the inherent risks they face, their management risk rating, the likelihood and consequences of risks to those business lines, a documentation of controls that are in place that have been designed to mitigate their risk” and more.

Another document was an internal audit report covering all of Computershare’s US operations which, among other things, ”describes in detail the company’s efforts to maintain and preserve shareholder and institutional privacy and confidentiality” as well as specific audit findings and detailed strategies for resolving issues.

Also Computershare’s lawyers told the US court that the woman copied her emails from the laptop and that these contained ”personally identifiable information of shareholders, including account numbers, names and holdings”.