For a night of drinks: Japanese employee lost several USBs with personal data from an entire city

A worker of a private contractor for the city of Amagasaki, in the prefecture of Hyogo in Japan, lost some USBs with the personal information of more than 460 thousand people. The municipal officials had to apologize publicly after the incident, since it involved all the citizens of that locality.

“We deeply regret having deeply damaged the public’s trust in the city administration”, Amagasaki officials told the press. Also, in a statement, the municipality stated that “would guarantee security management when handling electronic data”.

“We will work to regain the trust of our residents by raising awareness of the importance of protecting personal information.”, added the statement, after the event in Amagasaki was made public.

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According to what was reported by The Asahi Shimbun, the subject drank too much in a restaurant and fell asleep. “The employee took the devices from the information center of the municipality administration to transfer the data. After finishing the transfer and drinking alcohol in a restaurant, he discovered on the way home that the bag containing the devices was missing.”, indicated the medium.

“The Amagasaki City Government had not given permission to the Kansai regional branch of Biprogy (the contractor) to carry personal information on USB storage devices”, noted the Japanese newspaper about the incident.

“The data contained in these include the names of city residents, postal addresses, dates of birth, how much they pay in residence taxes, and bank account details of households receiving child benefits or livelihood protection benefits. Such data is either password protected or encrypted, according to the city government.”, he concluded.

Source: Elcomercio

James

I have worked as a journalist for over 10 years and have written for various news outlets. I currently work as an author at 24 News Recorder, mostly covering entertainment news. I have a keen interest in the industry and enjoy writing about the latest news and gossip. I am also a member of the National Association of Journalists.