Google, CNET lose outsourced employee personal data in a theft
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In what seems to be an unfortunate incident, personal data of some of Google’s employees was stolen in a burglary along with employees’ data of CNET Networks.
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Google outsources much of its human resources functions to Colt Express Outsourcing Services, an external company which handles such jobs for various other companies too. On May 26th, 2008, in a theft at Colt Express Outsourcing Services, various computers containing personal data of employees working with Google were stolen. The world leader in search engine traffic has confirmed the theft, clarifying that the data stolen is of employees hired prior to 2006.
The information stolen contains employees’ details and those of the dependents such as names, addresses, and Social Security numbers. Shockingly, none of the data was stored in an encrypted form by Col Express. All this information is enough for anyone who gets his hands onto this data to open a fake account or get a credit card issued. The thieves could even create fake identities using this data. However, nothing such has been reported yet. Along with Google, leading news firm, CNET Networks’ 6500 employees’ data also seems to be stolen in the burglary.
 A representative from Google was quoted as saying:
We take the security of our employees very seriously and require outside vendors to meet appropriate security standards. We review and update these standards on an ongoing basis.
Samuel Colt, CEO of Colt Express was quoted by ITWorld last month, saying:
We do not have the resources financial and otherwise to assist you further.
Interestingly, Google had already stopped using the services of Colt Express, a decision which was taken much before the burglary. Google has now offered to bear the cost of a one-year subscription for a credit report along with an identity theft-monitoring service. CNET Networks’ employees were offered the same too.
If Google regularly reviews the standards, why wasn’t the fact, that the information was not encrypted and stored, not noticed earlier ?
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