Two more organizations report data breaches

02.06.2006
Advocates for strong data privacy laws are getting plenty of ammunition to support their cause these days.

In yet another large data breach, Texas Guaranteed (TG) a Round Rock, Texas-based nonprofit organization that administers student loans Thursday announced that an outside contractor had lost an unspecified piece of equipment containing the names and Social Security numbers of approximately 1.3 million borrowers.

The loss was reported to the company on Friday by Hummingbird Ltd. a Toronto-based company that had been hired by TG to develop a document management system for TG. Kristin Boyer, a spokeswoman for TG said borrower files had been provided to Hummingbird as part of the contract.

According to Boyer, TG followed recommended security practices and encrypted all the information prior to transmitting it to Hummingbird. The data was then unencrypted by a Hummingbird employee and stored on equipment that later appears to have been lost, Boyer said.

"We don't have any indications at this point if there was malicious intent," behind the disappearance of the data, she said.

In a statement, Hummingbird said there was no reason to believe that the piece of equipment had been stolen to gain access to confidential data. The statement also said that the data had been protected through unspecified "security measures," which would make it difficult for unauthorized people to access the data.