Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Citi National Bank, Thousands of Millionaires, Iron Mountain

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In the San Francisco Chronicle, David Lazurus reports “Personal data lost — again:”

Today I bring news of yet another security breach involving potentially thousands of people’s personal info, and this is the first anyone’s hearing of it.

The latest company to drop the data ball is City National Bank, based in Los Angeles and one of the largest independent financial institutions in California.

City National, which specializes in high-end clients, became a player in Northern California when it acquired San Francisco’s Pacific Bank in 2000. It has 52 offices statewide and about $14 billion in assets.

When I told [Citi National Spokeswoman Linda Mueller] what I’d learned about the case from my own digging, Mueller confirmed that the incident happened in late April and that the data- storage firm involved is Iron Mountain.

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Because Citi National declines to answer questions, I see no reason not to assume the worst. The unencrypted tapes contained all the account information of all of Citi National’s customers.

Citi National describes their market as “the people whose identities you really, really want to steal.” No, wait, that’s not it. That’s how I describe their market. They say: [link to http://www.cnb.com/ir/index.asp no longer works]

City National Bank delivers banking, trust and investment services through more than 50 offices in Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area. The bank also has an office in New York City. The company provides complete financial solutions for individuals with $1 million or more of investable assets – a market of nearly 450,000 California households – and small and mid-sized companies with annual revenues of between $5 million and $250 million.

Between their tight-lipped refusal to speak, the nature of their clientelle, and the delay in reporting the problem, I predict this one will get nearly as much media play as Cardsystems.

(Via Farber’s IP list.)

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