Nationwide pays £980,000 for lost laptop

Nationwide, the UK’s largest building society, with over 11 million customers, has been fined £980,000 for information security breaches after a laptop containing customer details was stolen from an employee’s home. In determining non-compliance with Principle 3 (responsible and effective organisation and control, with adequate risk management), the FSA says that although the employee notified the company promptly of the theft, they did not say what was on the laptop and, in the following three weeks while the employee was on holiday, no attempt was made to discover the nature of the information that had been taken.