Loans Employee Leaks Customer Details to Competitors
Escrito el 4 de September del 2008 por webmaster.
The Financial Services Authority and Hertfordshire Police are investigating claims that a Loans.co.uk employee leaked customer details to rival companies, severely undermining customer confidence in the UK loans market and prompting a barrage of complaints.
Unsolicited calls made to Loans.co.uk customers from other personal loan companies who knew too much about their personal details and financial circumstances instigated a series of complaints to the Watford-based company. Customers suspected that their personal information had been passed on by the loans company and after an internal investigation their suspicions were confirmed. An audit of the IT systems containing the customer information database revealed that an employee had made unauthorised access.
A spokeswoman from the personal loans company said: “Loans.co.uk has the necessary controls in place to protect individual’s information. The fact that the system detected unauthorised access to the database proves that the controls are working.
“No organisation can fully guarantee that they are 100% protected against data theft,” continued the spokeswoman, adding that: “most companies would struggle if a trusted employee decides to act without authority.”
The case has caused some unrest in the Information Security community, and industry experts such as Mike Madison, UK head of security at Deloitte, pointed out that all firms are at risk from employee fraud and stressed that there was no way to guarantee security. However, he equally highlighted that rigid controls and security systems could allow any wrongdoing to be tracked, as in this instance.
The fact that an employee who should not have had access to the database managed to take customer details and pass them on to a competitor has cast the industry in a bad light, and certainly loans.co.uk will need to ensure that they institute an effective PR campaign to ensure that they restore consumer confidence. Indeed, the crime may well have gone unpunished had not customers complained about the unsolicited phone calls during which the callers would compare loans at Loans.co.uk against their own company’s personal loans and point out the benefits in switching.
As well as being reported to the police and the FSA, loans.co.uk has chosen to inform the Information Commissioner’s Office, who is also now investigating the breach. Companies and individuals can be prosecuted and incur substantial fines for breaching the Data Protection Act, and the ICO said it would work with Loans.co.uk to ensure that there will be no further incidents such as this at the company.
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