Zurich Insurance slammed with £2.28 million fine for losing customer data

The UK branch of Zurich Insurance has been fined a whopping £2.28 million after losing details of 46,000 customers.

The fine, imposed by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), comes as a result of Zurich Insurance losing customers’ confidential information when an unencrypted backup tape went missing during its transfer to a data storage centre in South Africa in August 2008.

Lost records included details of customers’ identities, and in some cases bank account and credit card information, and other financial information. Questions must be asked as to why this sensitive data was not encrypted at the very least.

The FSA said it was was the highest fine it had yet imposed for a data security foul-up.

The only silver lining is that no evidence has been uncovered that the lost data has been misused by identity thieves, and Zurich Insurance says it has introduced new security measures since the security incident.

BBC News…

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Graham Cluley •   @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer security, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an email.