Home Depot Screws its Employees

Data Loss? You can do it. We can help.™

Home Depot’s soon-to-be-fired regional manager left a laptop in his car so thieves could break in and steal it. It had the names, addresses and social security numbers of over 10 Thousand employees on the hard drive. They claim the computer was protected with a password, but that won’t prevent data recovery from the drive.

From the AP here:

The Home Depot Inc. said Wednesday that a laptop computer containing about 10,000 employees’ personal data was stolen from a regional manager’s car in Massachusetts.

The computer, which was password protected, didn’t contain any customer information, said Ron DeFeo, a spokesman for the company said. He would not say whether the information had been encrypted.

The laptop was stolen from his car while it was parked outside his home, DeFeo said.

The laptop contained names, home addresses and Social Security numbers of certain Home Depot employees.

Home Depot should fire the manager for leaving the valuable data in his car. And then they need to use proper information security practices company-wide to protect personal data at rest.