Simon Says – Musings of a Technology CTO

David Meyer from ZDNet reports that Zurich Insurance was hit with a $3.5m fine by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK for failing to secure customer data. This comes from an incident when a data tape went missing in transit between processing centers. There was no evidence the data on the tape had been used or exposed, but the lack of process and policy was enough to cause the FSA and step in.

The FSA noted in their statement that:

As there were no proper reporting lines in place Zurich UK did not learn of the incident until a year later

An effective breach of the UK Data Protection Act according to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).