Sensitive data lost, Time Warner says
By Tom Zeller Jr. The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, MAY 4, 2005
They include current and former employees, some of their dependents and beneficiaries and individuals who have provided services for the company. Time Warner said on Monday that the data, on 40 tapes in a container the size of a cooler, disappeared more than a month ago while being shipped to a storage center. Among those affected are virtually all the 85,000 current employees of Time Warner. A companywide e-mail message about the data loss was distributed on Monday, and the company said a more detailed letter would be mailed out over the next several days. Time Warner is offering to pay for one year of credit monitoring for all affected individuals with the credit reporting agency Equifax. "We take the security of our employees' personal information extremely seriously," Larry Cockell, the chief security officer, said in a statement, "and we deeply regret that this incident occurred." The U.S. Secret Service is continuing to investigate the missing tapes, said Kathy McKiernan, a company spokeswoman, although no evidence has yet surfaced that the tapes, or any information on them, have been stolen. No customer information was involved. The tapes were being transported by Iron Mountain, a records management company that routinely handles offsite data storage for Time Warner and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies. Iron Mountain, which is based in Boston, said it lost track of the bar-coded container holding the tapes after picking it up from Time Warner in Manhattan on March 22. The container was scanned and presumably placed onto an unmarked Iron Mountain truck, a spokeswoman for the company said, but it was not on the truck when it arrived at the Iron Mountain storage center in New Jersey later that day. Iron Mountain notified Time Warner immediately, and when an initial investigation by the two companies did not turn up the container, the Secret Service was called, Time Warner said. According to Melissa Burman, a spokeswoman for Iron Mountain, it was one of about 18 pickups and deliveries that the company made in New York that day. The company routinely makes about five million such transactions with customers around the world every year, with about a dozen or so such losses, on average. "It happens, unfortunately, when there are humans involved," Burman said. Iron Mountain began advising its corporate customers two weeks ago to begin encrypting the data on its backup tapes. Adding to concerns about the security of personal information, Time Warner has reported the loss of computer backup tapes containing sensitive data, including the names and Social Security numbers of about 600,000 people.They include current and former employees, some of their dependents and beneficiaries and individuals who have provided services for the company.Time Warner said on Monday that the data, on 40 tapes in a container the size of a cooler, disappeared more than a month ago while being shipped to a storage center.Among those affected are virtually all the 85,000 current employees of Time Warner. A companywide e-mail message about the data loss was distributed on Monday, and the company said a more detailed letter would be mailed out over the next several days. Time Warner is offering to pay for one year of credit monitoring for all affected individuals with the credit reporting agency Equifax."We take the security of our employees' personal information extremely seriously," Larry Cockell, the chief security officer, said in a statement, "and we deeply regret that this incident occurred."The U.S. Secret Service is continuing to investigate the missing tapes, said Kathy McKiernan, a company spokeswoman, although no evidence has yet surfaced that the tapes, or any information on them, have been stolen. No customer information was involved.The tapes were being transported by Iron Mountain, a records management company that routinely handles offsite data storage for Time Warner and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies. Iron Mountain, which is based in Boston, said it lost track of the bar-coded container holding the tapes after picking it up from Time Warner in Manhattan on March 22.The container was scanned and presumably placed onto an unmarked Iron Mountain truck, a spokeswoman for the company said, but it was not on the truck when it arrived at the Iron Mountain storage center in New Jersey later that day.Iron Mountain notified Time Warner immediately, and when an initial investigation by the two companies did not turn up the container, the Secret Service was called, Time Warner said.According to Melissa Burman, a spokeswoman for Iron Mountain, it was one of about 18 pickups and deliveries that the company made in New York that day. The company routinely makes about five million such transactions with customers around the world every year, with about a dozen or so such losses, on average. "It happens, unfortunately, when there are humans involved," Burman said.Iron Mountain began advising its corporate customers two weeks ago to begin encrypting the data on its backup tapes.
Time Warner Inc announced that they are unable to locate a container holding 40 backup tapes. These tapes contain personal information on 600,000 current and former employees back to 1986. This information includes details on dependents and beneficiaries, in addition to Social Security numbers. Customers were not affected, Time Warner said.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating and has not found any evidence that the tapes have been misused. This loss affects most of the 85,000 current employees. The tapes were lost by Iron Mountain Inc., a data storage company, which routinely handles off-site data storage for Time Warner and many other Fortune 500 companies. Time Warner has said that the tapes would require expensive equipment to read them, and that they were encrypted.