Little Drive Means Big Drama

When an IBM subsidiary set out to refurbish computers storing data for clients, no one could have anticipated the drama that would follow when a pocket-sized, 30-gigabyte hard drive - valued at a little more than $100 - was reported missing in January.

At first, managers of the IBM business believed that the drive contained limited information on clients of several government agencies in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. But in the following days, executives from the IBM unit - Information Systems Management (ISM) Canada - said the hard drive not only contained data on about 100,000 clients of government agencies, but also highly sensitive personal information on 175,000 clients of a prominent Canadian insurance firm, and 650,000 clients of a large mutual fund company.

ISM had suddenly become embroiled in the largest information privacy breach in Canada to date.

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