Japanese Employee Loses USB Drive With Sensitive Info Of Half A Million Residents

Drinks after work with some friends might be an excellent idea for many; however, for this particular Japanese employee, it would cost a great deal.

The worker, who shall not be named, lost a memory stick that contained the personal information of all residents of Amagasaki city, northwestern Osaka in Japan, following a night of drinks in the last week, as per an announcement released Thursday by the city’s administration.

Public broadcaster NHK announced that the victim was a man in his 40s who was found to sleep on the street after drinking alcohol in an establishment. After waking up in the morning, his bag with the flash drive was missing.

The worker is employed by the company that provides the tax-exempt household with benefits, according to the statement of the city’s government.

He was there on Tuesday. Visited the city’s information center and transferred residents’ personal information onto an external flash drive. The data contained people’s names, birth dates, and addresses of 465,177 people, according to the statement -all of the city’s residents.

This flash drive contained delicate data such as tax information, bank account names and numbers, and details on families that receive public assistance like childcare benefits.

On Wednesday, the employee searched for the drive but couldn’t locate it, and he then registered a lost property claim at the local police station, as per the statement from the government. In the afternoon, the company alerted city officials about the loss.

This flash drive has been encrypted, and there haven’t been any data leaks discovered yet, the authorities stated in the statement.

The statement also mentioned that although the employee was given access to the information, he had not been granted permission to transfer the data onto another device. The report also criticizes the employee for not being able to erase the information from the flash drive after completing his work in the city office and for carrying it in his vehicle rather than using a safer transport method.

The authorities held a press gathering on Thursday. The mayor of the city, as well as other officials, bowed to apologize to the residents.

The city will issue payments to households that are eligible without delay and will give more information about the matter when they conduct an investigation, according to the official announcement — that concluded with a sharp note to all government employees to obtain permission before using flash drives in office spaces of the city.

Source: CNN

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