Ernst & Young Screws IBM Employees

E&Y has lost Another Laptop according to the Register here. Last time, E&Y screwed Sun Microsystems employees, including CEO Scott McNealy.

This time E&Y targets IBM with their shoddy handling of sensitive customer data.

Ernst & Young has lost another laptop containing the social security numbers and other personal information of its clients’ employees. This time, the incident puts thousands of IBM workers at risk.

Ex-IBM employees are also affected.

The Register has learned that the laptop was stolen from an Ernst & Young employee’s car in January. The employee handled some of the tax functions Ernst & Young does for IBM workers who have been stationed overseas at one time or another during their careers. As a result of the theft, the names, dates of birth, genders, family sizes, SSNs and tax identifiers for IBM employees have been exposed.

Last month, The Register revealed that another Ernst & Young laptop theft had exposed the social security number and other personal information of Sun Microystems CEO Scott McNealy and an unknown number of other people. Since our story ran, a Cisco employee informed us that his data was on the same laptop as the one containing McNealy’s information.

The loss of the IBM data outraged Jeff Moran, the husband of the IBM worker told of the data breach.

“Ernst & Young has a policy that this type of information is not supposed to be on a laptop,” Moran said. “Yet, these guys download the data because it’s convenient for them.”

“All of our information is out there, and they didn’t bother to tell us until March. By that time, the thief would have already used the information. This is an outrage, but until Congress starts punishing these guys, nothing will happen.”

Ernst & Young has offered those affected a free, 12 month credit monitoring service provided by Experian. The service includes a hotline that IBM employees can call.

Yay, free credit monitoring. E&Y seems that they cannot be trusted with sensitive data.