High street pharmacist Boots has lost thousands
ofcustomer bank detailsafter a back up
tape was stolen from the van of a security contractor.
The tape was stolen from
Medisure, the company that
administers Boots' Dental Plan. Medisure in turn employed a
security company that handled one of the back up tapes and this was
stolen from one of its vans on 3 April.
Boots said that Medisure
has informed the Financial
Services Authority about the theft and wrote to customers on 19
April.
A Boots statement claimed, "Because of the type of data tape
that was stolen and the way the information was stored it is highly
unlikely that any personal data could be accessed or misused."
Although Medisure did not say whether the
data was
encrypted, it did say in its own letter to customers that
opening the tapes would require highly specialised IT equipment and
could not be used on any home-style PCs or laptops.
"Reviewing this incident closely with the Police, they consider
this to be an opportunist theft rather than a planned operation,"
Medisure said in the letter.
The case comes nearly a year after the Financial Services
Authority (FSA)
fined the Nationwide
Building Society (Nationwide) £980,000 for failing to have
proper controls to manage its information securely. It also follows
the government's own
loss of 25 million child benefit discs.
A security survey
conducted by the Government this week revealed that security
breaches cost UK plcs several billions of pounds.
Announcing the results of the survey,
Business Minister Shriti Vadera said,: "New technology is a key
source of productivity gains, but without adequate investment in
security defences these gains can be undermined by IT security
breaches.