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This may be a good question is you are a Hotels.com customer. ZDNet reports that an Ernst & Young employee's laptop was stolen in a seemingly random car burglary.
Ernst & Young are the auditors for Hotels.com, and the stolen laptop contained personal financial data on some 243,000 Hotels.com customers from 2004 and prior.
The theft occurred some time in February, and we are just now learning of it because on May 31, Ernst & Young instituted stricter security measures, including password-protection and encrytion software. The stolen laptop had the password protection but not the encryption software.
To their benefit, Hotels.com has instituted a toll-free call center for questions or concerns, and has contected the credit card companies. They also began immediately upon being notified of the theft to reconstruct the stolen data and notify affected customers.
Several people who responded to this story on ZDNet were offended that such information should be stored on a laptop that someone took with them. This particular practice is commonplace during audit season, though. The best suggestion I found among the respondents was to store this information on a server, instead.
If you have any alternative solutions, we welcome your comments.
CIAO for now,
Randy
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