Comments on: U.K. company fined over laptop theft

Financial institution failed to operate effective security measures to protect customers from data theft, government watchdog agency says.

[mikekrause]

Awesome!

Now if only we would start doing the same thing to negligent companies here in the United States...

Let's face it, the only thing companies really understand is making money and losing money. They want to make as much of it as they can, and they don't want to lose any of it. Let's make the punishment for not treating sensitive information the way they should fit the crime.

[rshew]

No kidding

My initial reaction on reading that the suing party was the FSA was to think, whoah, is this appropriate? Seeing the government stepping into private sector business like this was alarming. Then I considered our history of events like this in the US and I agreed entirely with your comment.

It *is* appropriate for the government to step in when companies abuse their clients whether that be intentional (Spitzer and the insurance broking scandal, for example) or sloppiness. One thing that I then, cynically,, realized was that at least in the US it would take a *lot* of instances of companies getting huge penalties before anyone bothered to take genuine steps to change matters for the better: consider the ongoing corruption we have seen since Enron and how time and time again well-to-do individuals are caught breaking the law with stock transactions.

Irregardless, slapping a big fine on US companies who do not take keeping private client data secure is the only way anything will change here.

[jabbotts]

damn right

about freaking time. I honestly can't understand how there's a "crap, we lost our clients data on some computer hardware" storey weekly. Maybe fines will make it more financialy justifiable to put some budget into security.

[wbenton]

'bout Time

Finally... somebody with the guts to hold the responsible party responsible!!!

We need more instances of this...

It's the only way to reduce future chances of this happening again.

Unless irresponsible companies are held responsible for their irresponsibility... this will only continue to happen.

Walt