Credit agency suffers 'misappropriation' of 2.3 million consumer records

Florida-based Fidelity National Information Services on Tuesday announced a "misappropriation of consumer data" by a former employee of its Certegy Check Services subsidiary.

The former employee allegedly sold 2.3 million consumer records to a data broker who, in turn, sold the information to various marketing organizations. The records contained information on 2.2 million bank accounts and 990,000 credit card accounts, according to FIS.

"We have no reason to believe that the theft resulted in any subsequent fraudulent activity or financial damage to the consumer, and we are taking the necessary steps to see that any further use of the data stops," Certegy President Renz Nichols said in a statement.

As a precaution against identity theft, Certegy has notified major credit agencies and plans to soon notify all consumers affected by the data breach.

[marileev]

Employee Betrayal

This is another case of employee betrayal. This person's greedy actions put soo many people at risk for ID theft and years of watching their financial accounts. <br /><br />While FNIS's Certegy group's president Renz Nichols says. "We have no reason to believe that the theft resulted in any subsequent fraudulent activity or financial damage to the consumer." Who's to say the data brokerage firms this FNIS employee sold the records to also has unscrupulous employees?<br /><br />People can work an entire lifetime to become financially successful and incidents like these put their financial futures in jeopardy <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.essentialsecurity.com/news.htm?pagename=Protecting_Your_Personal_Financial_Information_" target="_newWindow">http://www.essentialsecurity.com/news.htm?pagename=Protecting_Your_Personal_Financial_Information_</a>(PFI)

[georgescott]

2.3 million records

That is a lot of data. They have no internal controls otherwise no one would be able to get that much data out of there system. To blame the employee and forget that the employer is not to allow that to happen in the first place.

[ajhoughton]

Erm, no.

You can't jump to the conclusion that they have "no internal <br />controls" simply because of the amount of data this employee <br />was able to obtain.<br /><br />For all you know, the employee might have been a database <br />administrator with admin access to the system that holds the <br />records. Or they might have been someone who dealt with <br />selling large quantities of data as part of their normal job, in <br />which case, again, they could legitimately have access to the <br />records in bulk.<br /><br />We simply don't know (not from this article, anyway) who the <br />employee was or how they got hold of the data, so speculating <br />as to who was really at fault here is largely irrelevant. (Also, to <br />my mind, it will *always* be the employee who was at fault here, <br />since it was the employee that chose to distribute the data <br />illegally, *even if* the only reason they were able to get it was <br />that their employer was naïve.)

[46OldGoat51]

Consumer Records

The former employee, the data broker and those marketing organizations who bought the information with the knowledge that it had been obtained illegally should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.