More than 100,000 affected by Bord Gais laptop thefts Sunday, July 05, 2009 By Nicola Cooke Personal details of more than 100,000 Bord Gais customers were on laptops stolen from the energy firm last month, significantly more than the 75,000 initially reported.
Details of the full extent of the security breach are expected to emerge when the findings of an investigation into the laptop thefts are disclosed. Four laptops were stolen from the Bord Gais offices on Foley Street in Dublin city centre on June 5, including at least one containing unencrypted customer information and bank account details.
Gardai investigated the theft of the laptops, while the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner is investigating why the laptop with the customer information was not encrypted.
Bord Gais informed gardai and theData Protection Commissioner six days after the robbery, but did not initially reveal that the laptop was unprotected by encryption.
The account details belong to customers who had switched over to Bord Gais’s electricity service up to May 29, following the company’s high-profile Big Switch campaign. According to Bord Gais, more than 150,000 people have switched to the service since February.
While Bord Gais said in a statement on June 19 that details of 75,000 customers were on the stolen laptop, it is understood that the final report of the Data Protection Commissioner will indicate that more than 100,000 account details were on the unencrypted machine.
When contacted by The Sunday Business Post, David Bunworth, head of energy supply at Bord Gais, did not deny this revised figure. ‘‘The Data Protection Commissioner will be publishing a full report on the matter in the coming weeks and we will be responding to this,” he said.
‘‘We have had detailed communications with the commissioner, and they have all the information they require from us. There is a due process with these enquiries and there will be a further announcement from Bord Gais when this is published.
‘‘I can tell you there has not been one incident of a customer ringing us to say that their account has been tampered with,” he said.
The semi-state company is expected to review its security procedures and encryption policies when it receives the commissioner’s report. The lack of encryption was described by Bord Gais as a ‘‘flaw in the system’’ which was ‘‘deeply regretted’’.
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