HSBC Swiss has about 15K customers' data stolen
11 Mar 2010
Infocast
(Infocast News) HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) unveiled the extent of data theft in Switzerland, saying that it is now clear that the theft, which was perpetrated by a former IT employee about three years ago, involves approximately 15,000 existing clients who had accounts with the bank in the country before October 2006.
The bank said it does not believe that the stolen data has or will allow any third party to access any client account. The stolen client information is limited to accounts in Switzerland, excluding ex-HSBC Guyerzeller accounts. There is no data compromised for any branches of the bank outside Switzerland, which operate on separate systems and security, or other entities within the HSBC Group.
The bank said it is doing its utmost to ensure that this cannot happen again and has already made significant improvements to its security, spending over CHF100 million to upgrade systems and improve security.
Copies of a significant portion of the data were returned to the bank on March 3 by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor. The French authorities had previously seized the files from the former IT employee, who absconded from Switzerland while under investigation, before passing copies to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor. The bank is cooperating with the Swiss authorities and continues its own investigations, and a criminal investigation led by the Swiss Federal Prosecutor is underway. The Swiss authorities confirmed to us that they will not support the use of the stolen data to answer requests from foreign authorities. The French authorities have informed the Swiss authorities that the data they hold will not be used inappropriately.
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