Bloomberg suffers breach after customer data surfaces online

Bloomberg is scrambling to secure its finance service after a leaked transcript exposed customer information.

The Financial Times reported that a list, which has since been taken down, was publicly accessible and contained data such as customer names and financial transaction details. The leaked list was said to be part of a previous project to help gather financial data on transactions.

According to the FT report, prior to its removal the list had been indexed by Google and could have been accessed through a simple search query.

The breach is the second such gaffe to come from Bloomberg in recent days. Earlier this week the company was forced to apologise to users after it was discovered that similar details about customers and transactions had been left open to reporters in Bloomberg's news agency who had access to the company's terminal platform.

Following that disclosure, chief executive Daniel Doctoroff apologised to customers and said that the company would be changing its policies.

"To be clear, the limited customer relationship data previously available to our reporters never included access to our trading, portfolio, monitor, blotter or other related systems or our clients’ messages," the Bloomberg chief said in an open letter.

"Moreover, reporters could not see news stories that clients read, or the securities they viewed. Bloomberg has very strict data security policies in place, in addition to significant and rigorous training, processes and protocols."

Doctoroff later said that the company has contacted some 300 clients to apologise for the error and explain the company's new policies which limit journalist access to publicly available information and create a new compliance officer role

Box touts security chops with ISO 27001 compliance

Cloud storage and sharing firm Box has announced that its service is now ISO 27001 compliant.

The company said that its enterprise service now meets the security standard for data protection and has earned approval for information security management standards. The certification verifies that the service is now able to provide a high standard of security for customers using Box.

The company hopes that the certification, along with its compliance with other standards, will help to build customer confidence and bring further enterprise business.

"This certification demonstrates our commitment not only to the security and control of our customers’ data, but also our commitment to our global customer base," said Box enterprise group product marketing manager Grant Shirk.

"We started down this path last year and our compliance efforts are gaining steam – we received our SOC-1/SSAE16 Type II, SOC-2 Type II report and announced our support for HIPAA compliance in just the past quarter."

The lack of confidence in security and compliance has long been seen as a major hurdle in the uptake of enterprise cloud storage platforms.

Box, however, believes that by adding ISO 27001 and other security compliance credentials it can restore user confidence as well as press its business into new international markets.

"While this is an important certification for Box, it’s just one more step along our long-term roadmap and commitment to providing the highest level of transparency and assurance to our customers about the quality and security of our platform, top to bottom," Shirk explained.

"It's also a critical component of our ability to serve our international customers in Europe, the Middle East and Asia – where we’ve seen our customer growth more than double in the past year."