Tapes Lost, Found

The U.S. Secret Service has closed three high-profile cases involving backup tapes from Bank of America, Citigroup and Time Warner that were reported lost in transit to storage facilities in 2005.

The tapes contained personal data on hundreds of thousands of consumers. “The tapes were never found,” says Dale Pupillo, deputy special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s criminal investigative division. “Although we can’t prove what happened, we suspect that the tapes were lost or disposed of in the normal course of transportation. They were damaged or discarded. We don’t suspect anyone of having deliberately stolen the tapes.”

Recent cases of lost computer mediaanother company, ABN Amro Mortgage Group said in December that DHL shipping facility staff had recovered a computer tape (and its data on roughly 2 million customers) nearly a month after it went missinghave spurred businesses and the federal government to strengthen their procedures. Iron Mountain, the records storage and management company that lost Time Warner’s backup tapes from its courier truck, now offers customers an “extended level of protection for high-value tapes” that includes special processing instructions for an additional fee. The company is promoting services for digital archiving, electronic vaulting and remote backup business, a small (5 percent) but growing service.

Congress is looking at several bills to protect personal data, including one requiring companies to notify police, consumers and credit card issuers of a breach. The Secret Service, meanwhile, is using its Electronic Crimes Task Force meetings to offer guidance, Pupillo says.