US Imposes Record Fine On Morgan Stanley For Sensitive Data Breach

  • U.S. regulators penalized Morgan Stanley MS $35 million for failing to protect customer data, leading to the online auction of some computer hardware containing sensitive client data.
  • The U.S. SEC acknowledged that the Wall Street bank’s wealth management business failed to protect information identifying 15 million customers over five years.
  • From at least 2015, MS failed to dispose of devices storing clients’ data adequately. 
  • MS hired a moving company that did not specialize in discarding data and tasked it with disabling thousands of servers and hard drives. 
  • The moving company subsequently sold thousands of the bank’s devices, some of which contained customer data, to a third party before resale on an online auction site. 
  • MS recovered some but not most of the equipment. MS also failed to protect customer data while shutting down some servers on its network. 
  • The SEC heightened scrutiny of Wall Street’s record-keeping practices, the Financial Times reports.
  • In December, JP Morgan Chase & Co JPM agreed to pay U.S. regulators $200 million for failing to maintain records of employees’ communications on personal devices.
  • Price Action: MS shares traded lower by 1.56% at $87.34 on the last check Tuesday.
  • Photo via Wikimedia Commons
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