Twenty-Four Seven Security

Fidelity National Information Services Inc, an electronic payments processor, announced on Tuesday that a database administrator pilfered and then sold as many as 2.3 million bank and credit card records. Since the discovery the worker has been fired, and Certegy has filed a lawsuit against him.

As with TJX, and their breach of 45.7 million credit and debit card accounts, this represents a growing problem as databases become increasingly targeted. Fidelity, though, represents an even more endemic problem: insider theft, which I recently covered in this podcast.

The employee, who worked in the company’s Certegy Check Services Inc. unit, passed the information on to a data broker, who purportedly then sold some of it to direct marketers. So far all that has resulted is the victims becoming targets of marketing solicitations, and to this point there has been no evidence of any fraud, Fidelity reported.

But the stolen data included names, addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, bank account and credit card information. Renz Nichols, Certegy’s President, announced on a conference call that he was very confident that the breach had been mostly contained. Nichols also said the unit employs five database administers, and that they would be under extreme scrutiny.

While the Secret Service and local law enforcement continue to investigate, if my information were included in that breach, I would be watching my accounts very closely for the foreseeable future.