Nationwide fine for stolen laptop (BBC) {$1,900,000 fine}

[eppur_se_muova]

The Nationwide Building Society has been fined £980,000 by the City watchdog over security breaches.

The fine follows the theft of a laptop from a Nationwide employee's home which contained confidential customer data.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) found security was not up to scratch after the man had put details of nearly 11 million customers on his computer.

The FSA also found that the Nationwide did not start an investigation until three weeks after the theft occurred.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6360715.stm

Holy crap! That's ... lessee ... um, 17¢ per customer?

Why don't they put these hard drives in the biggest, heaviest, bolted-to-the-floor computers they have? Why keep putting highly SENSITIVE info on easy-to-steal laptops? (In this case, it sounds like the employee was the weak link in the chain. But there are ways of quarantining company data.)