[ISN] Laptop with Hewlett-Packard employees' ID stolen

[InfoSec News]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/14162732.htm

By Nicole C. Wong
Mercury News
Mar. 22, 2006

A Fidelity Investments laptop that contained the names, addresses,
Social Security numbers, birth dates, compensation and other
information for 196,000 current and former Hewlett-Packard employees
participating in the company-sponsored retirement plan was stolen a
week ago, the two companies confirmed Wednesday.

Fidelity sent e-mails and letters overnight to the retirement plan
participants notifying them of the security breach. The Boston-based
financial services company, which administers HP's defined benefit
pension plan and 401k retirement plan, has subsequently stepped up
monitoring of its HP accounts and added more authentication measures
so people must provide extra personal information to access their
accounts.

``We have no indication that any of the information's been misused,''
Anne Crowley, a Fidelity spokeswoman, said Wednesday evening. ``We
went back and monitored activity in accounts since the theft, and we
find nothing to indicate there's any unusual or suspicious activity.''

Fidelity would not say how or where its laptop was stolen on the
evening of March 15 because a local law enforcement agency is
investigating the case. But Crowley noted, ``the law enforcement
agency did tell us there have been other laptop thefts in that area
recently and they've largely appeared to be related to property theft,
as opposed to someone setting out for data theft.''