Beverage giant Coca-Cola Co revealed that the laptops that were stolen temporarily from its headquarters in Atlanta held the personal information of up to 74,000 employees, contractors and suppliers, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Coke had informed its employees in the US and Canada that the data on the unencrypted laptops comprised of names, addresses, Social Security numbers, financial compensation, ethnicity and other details. The beverage firm added that the laptops were later recovered and that "no indication" was found that the information found therein were misused. Coke did not reveal how it knew of the robbery or how the laptops were later retrieved, the report said.
The world's largest beverage firm has already notified 18,000 people whose names and Social Security numbers were contained on the computers as well as 56,000 other people whose personal data, mainly their driver's license numbers, were also on the laptops, the report said.
Coke Spokesperson Ann Moore said that a former employee who was responsible for maintaining or disposing equipment perpetrated the theft. However, she did not name the employee or said if the individual was still an employee when the theft occurred, the report said.
Citing a memo given to its employees and seen by The WSJ, the report said it was the policy of the coke to encrypt computers but for some reason not explained in the memo, the stolen laptops had not been encrypted yet. The company also said it knew of the personal data in the laptops after they were retrieved.
Even if it already knew that personal information was in the stolen computers as early as December 10, Coke said it only told employees Friday, January 24, since it had to examine the laptops' contents, the report said citing the memo.
Part of the memo read, "To expedite the process, we brought in extra crews that worked long hours, including throughout the holiday period and on weekends, to sort through the data.''
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