OpEdNews » Pfizer screws up royally: 17,000 employee names and SS numbers copied by thieves

Support OEN
With Your
Tax-Deductible Donation

Tags for This Article:

Populum Tag Cloud Control Panel
	Fine tune your search to access content

Articles	Links
Diaries	Products
Events	All

All time
Last 6 mos
Last month
Last week
Last 24 hrs

From:
Month Day Year

To:
Month Day Year

Alphabet Popularity	Count ON Count OFF
This Level	Sub-levels

Tag(s): Fraud
Add to My Group

June 11, 2007 at 13:30:34

Pfizer screws up royally: 17,000 employee names and SS numbers copied by thieves

by Peter Rost Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

SAVE FAVORITES

VIEW FAVORITES

View Ratings | Rate It

According to Pfizer, "the breach occurred when the spouse of a Pfizer employee loaded unauthorized software onto the employee's Pfizer laptop computer. The software allowed outsiders access to a number of files, that included the names and social security numbers of the affected Pfizer employees."

Pfizer also writes that 15,700 employees "had their data accessed and copied" and 1,250 "may have had their data copied" by thieves.

Clearly Pfizer is trying to put the blame on the employee who's spouse loaded file sharing software onto a Pfizer computer, and as expected on Pfizer's message board on CafePharma other employees are now asking for this employee's head on a plate.

But is the story that simple?

No company with one hundred thousand employees can assure that each employee always does the right thing, much less their spouses.

What they can and should do is to assure there are appropriate routines and encryption in place to protect sensitive data even if such data is leaked.

Clearly Pfizer didn't care enough to do that.

This data breach will cause major challenges not only for Pfizer employees; the privacy of former employees has also been violated.

The fact that it has been confirmed that our names and social security numbers have been copied by anonymous individuals means that there is a significant likelihood that this information is now being traded on illicit websites; selling these numbers and names to be used in financial fraud and fake documents.

I have not received my letter yet, but I'm checking my mailbox every day.

Thank you, Pfizer!

To view Pfizer's letter to state attorney generals and employees, click here.

Peter Rost M.D. Peter Rost, M.D., is a former Vice President of Pfizer. He is the author of "The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman" and "Killer Drug." He also writes the daily Pharma Law Blog and the Pharma Expert Witness Blog.

	Contact Author
	Contact Editor
	View Other Articles by Author

Bookmark this page: (what's this?)

(More...)

1 comments

I live in Ohio, born in 1947 and I am retired.I like baseball(Go Tribe) and F1.I am a liberal and a socialist.I am a follower of the Living Church of God.My music goes from DooWop to geezer rock to classical and opera.I still have a beta-max and a 8track player.
Willard RussellI live in Ohio, born in 1947 and I am retired.I like baseball(Go Tribe) and F1.I am a liberal and a socialist.I am a follower of the Living Church of God.My music goes from DooWop to geezer rock to classical and opera.I still have a beta-max and a 8track player.

Another brick out of the wall

In another week or two we will see another story about a corp or govt office doing the same thing. Maybe I don't beleve that little grey folks crashed in Roswell, but I am beginning to think that these can not all be accidents. How could that many groups be that incompetent?

by Willard Russell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 41 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 8:10:01 AM