In an absolutely shocking incident, a LAPTOP which contained banking and personal information of the CEO of Anglo Irish Bank, Mike Aynsley has been stolen.
Who is Mike Aynsley and when did the incident happen?
As we mentioned above, Mike Aynsley is an Australian and he was appointed as the chief executive of the nationalised bank in August 2009. Mr Aynsley hails from the city of Sydney in Australia and prior to this he was associated with banking industry in the geographies of Australia and Asia. At the time of his appointment, Anglo had been without a chief executive for eight months following the resignation of David Drumm the previous December.
This was exactly eight months after chairman David Drumm fled on the discovery of concealment of loans of over €100m being to former chairman Sean FitzPatrick. So this means, Anglo Irish Bank was without a CEO for eight months.
Coming back to the incident, although it happened in November its revelation was made only a few months ago. There were three hooded males who were captured on a CCTV breaking into the south Dublin home of Mr Aynsley and stealing a laptop. Not only this, they also laid their hands on a 120 gig iPod and a digital camera which is believed to contain 32gb of SD card. This incident had happened in broad daylight in mid-November. Till today, detectives have not been able to figure out who the thieves are and where the laptop is?
To top it all, the laptop files were un-encrypted although there was a password protection in place.
Security at 52-year-old Mr Aynsley’s home was subsequently beefed up and other senior officials at Anglo have also been given personal security advice.
Was Mr. Aynsely’s Home Secure?
Actually, if you analyze Mr. Aynsely’s home, it is having state of art security systems. But the thieves were really intelligent and their acts demonstrate that they weren’t like any roadside burglars. First of all, they broke into the back door panel, they were also able to evade the state-of-the-art infra-red wireless alarm beams and even the closed circuit TV (which had secret pin-hole cameras, as well as obvious wall-mounted CCTV cameras inside and out). The only thing that was left as an evidence, was the cctv footage which shows the three masked man entering inside.
As per a statement: “A senior executive’s home was burgled last November when a small number of personal items were taken including a laptop. The gardai were immediately alerted and are continuing to investigate.”
In a couple of other news incidents, the CFO of Anglo Irish Bank, Mr Van Eden has resigned. Also the Anglo Irish bank is expected to post a loss of €17.6 billion for 2010, which is the the largest in Irish corporate history, beating their own previous record. At the time of this post, there’s no direct correlation observed to have been found out b/w the laptop theft incident and these two news stories.
Laptop Theft and Alertsec
This news exemplifies the need for data protection applications like Data encryption software and Laptop encryption. In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.
Related articles
- Winding Down Anglo Irish, Irish Nationwide (online.wsj.com)
- Former Anglo-Irish Bank CEO Drumm will testify (reuters.com)
