A laptop housing the personal information of current and
former VeriSign employees has been stolen, exposing them to
potential
identity fraud.
 | | | | | The local police have said the
theft may be tied to a series of neighborhood burglaries.
VeriSign, |
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It is not known how many identities were exposed when the laptop
was stolen from the car of a former employee last month. The
company, whose product line includes security services and tools,
said there's no indication of fraudulent activity thus far.
The vendor said it is taking the theft "very seriously" and that
it started an investigation the moment the theft was
discovered.
"The local police have said the theft may be tied to a series of
neighborhood burglaries. We disabled any access by the employee's
computer to the VeriSign network," VeriSign said in a public
statement.
The company said the car was burglarised while parked in the
employee's Northern California garage between the evening of
Thursday, July 12, 2007 and the morning of Friday, July 13, 2007.
The laptop may have contained such personal information as names,
Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salary information,
telephone numbers and home addresses. But it did not include credit
card numbers, bank account numbers, or password information, nor
did it contain any information on VeriSign customers, the company
said. The vendor also noted that the employee responsible for the
laptop has since left the company.
"We are contacting all individuals whose personal information
may have been on the stolen laptop," the company statement
continued. "We have no reason to believe that the thief or thieves
acted with the intent to extract and use this information; the
police have indicated that there may be a connection to a series of
petty thefts in the neighbourhood. The laptop was fully shut down
and requires a username and password to log on to the Windows
application. To our knowledge, the thieves do not have the
password."
The incident may be especially embarrassing to VeriSign since it
is known, among other things, for its security offerings. The
company bills itself as the leading secure sockets layer (SSL)
certificate authority enabling secure e-commerce and communications
for Web sites, intranets, and extranets. It also owns the iDefense
Security Intelligence Service.
The
theft or loss of laptops with sensitive data has become all to
common in the past year. The most notorious case involved the theft
of a laptop and external hard drive containing personally
identifiable information on 26.5 million veterans and active-duty
military personnel.
The VA laptop was found approximately a month later and law
enforcement officials believe that none of the sensitive data was
even accessed by the thief. However, the VA's handling of the
incident and slow response led to an internal investigation that
resulted in a
scathing report from the department's Office of
the Inspector General.