When Bank of America disclosed in February that its courier service had lost backup tapes containing data on about 1.2 million federal employees—including names and Social Security numbers—consumers, senators and even some industry peers asked how there could have been such a lapse in security. No escort for the air transport? No encryption of the tapes?

So in May, when Time Warner revealed that couriers at its storage management provider, Iron Mountain, had lost a cooler-size container of computer tapes—holding personal, unencrypted data on 600,000 current and former employees—while it was en route to a data storage facility, it served as a chilling reminder that these aren't isolated incidents and that security processes need to be revised. More proof came on June 6, when United Parcel Service confirmed that it had lost the financial data of nearly 4 million Citigroup customers while computer tapes were being transported to a credit bureau. And on July 5, national media outlets reported that Iron Mountain had lost two backup data tapes with the personal and financial records of an unspecified number of customers of the City National Bank of Los Angeles.

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