People in the world look at Google and see a behemoth. They see a company that has surpassed Microsoft in terms of power and influence. And they might very well be right. However, Google isn’t going to take over the United States and eventually the world. In fact, it takes hits just like every other company out there. In this case, it failed to secure some of the personal details of its employees and it the most recent company to note that it has suffered a data breach.

In this case, Google is really a victim as much as are the people whose information was stolen. Google uses Colt Express Outsourcing Services to take care of certain human resource functions. Therefore, when the office of Colt was broken into, it was Google information and that of other companies that was stolen. What is even worse about the May 26 break-in was that Colt does not encrypt its data, so whoever perpetrator the crime has nothing standing in between them and the personal information of Google employees. This information contains social security numbers, names, and addresses. This breach also affected CNET Networks.

As more details about this breach have come forward, it is clear that the stolen information does not contain any credit card numbers. However, a name, address, and social security number of an individual is more than enough for a criminal to open up a fake credit card account, although the charges end up being far too real for those affected by the crime. People, not only those impacted by the Colt burglary, have been turning toward subscriptions with ID theft services, such as Lifelock. Lifelock contacts all three credit bureaus, Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian and monitors credit reports for activity that includes credit card and loan applications. Whenever one of these is filed, Lifelock contacts its customer to make sure that the application is legitimate.

In the case of this specific breach at Colt, Google has said that it will pay for a year’s subscription with an identity theft service, both for its employees and the employees at CNET. Colt is not able to provide this same guarantee because it is going through financial difficulties. Those affected by this breach are those Google employees hired before December 31, 2005. Google only recently realized that its employees were at risk and has sent out letters alerting people of the danger to their private data. Google has also announced that it no longer has any association with Colt and that the company does not currently handle human resource material for the internet giant. Google has said that its separation from Colt took place long before the burglary was reported.

Tags: CNET, Colt Express, Equifax, Experian, Google, lifelock, TransUnion

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 3:40 am and is filed under Corporate Breaches, Individuals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.