Personal info found on used copier in warehouse
April 26, 2010 by Sam NarisiPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security
As a recent news story shows, a lot of companies are still unaware of the security dangers posed by copier hard drives.
Affinity Health Plan, a New York-based non-profit managed care plan, recently notified 409,000 employees, providers, members and applicants that their personal information may have been breached.
The source of the potential breach: an old copier hard drive.
The organization was informed that a leased copier returned to the leasing company may contain personal information — including Social Security numbers, birth dates and medical info — on its hard drive. It’s currently trying to retrieve the machine to examine the drive, Affinity said in a press release.
According to a CBS news report, the machine was found in a warehouse in New Jersey, ready to be sold.
Affinity officials admitted a lack of knowledge can be blamed for the situation: “Like many organizations across the country, we were not aware copy machines contained hard drives that need to be wiped,” said Abbe Abboa-Offei, senior vice president of Customer & Community Connections.
The organization’s now learned its lesson and is changing its practices when returning leased equipment.
DocuCrunch.com delivers the latest IT and Imaging news once a week to the inboxes of over 200,000 IT and Imaging professionals.
Click here to sign up and start your FREE subscription to DocuCrunch!
Tags: copiers, hard drives, personal information, security breach
Loading ...
April 28th, 2010 at 10:17 am
The leasing company and the copier manufacturer should each have an obligation to disclose the hard drive to the customer.
Makers of copiers with drives should offer a tool to scrub the drive of a working copier and advise about physically destroying the drive of one being scrapped.
Of course, I have never seen such a warning on a desktop or laptop I bought but at least on one of those I would need to be really dumb to not realize there is stored data.
May 13th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
[...] old copier: A data thief’s best friendPersonal info found on used copier in warehouseWhat’s the most reliable printer brand?Looking for personal info? Check your copier’s [...]