14 DAY TRIAL // Financial Tracking Technologies LLC (FTT) was contracted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to set up a new ethics system, but it turns out that's not the only thing they were doing. Recent investigations revealed that the company violated the agreement by providing employee sensitive information to a subcontractor without permission.
According to News.Gnom.es, SEC representatives believe that the data contained in the personal brokerage accounts wasn't used in any manner that would affect the well-being of their staff, but they advise them to place a fraud alert on their accounts while the organization will offer them a year of free credit monitoring.
“We are not aware of any actual misuse of the data. Nevertheless, it is the SEC’s policy to provide notification of any incident that presents the potential for unauthorized access to personal information,” revealed Chief Information Officer Thomas Bayer.
The incident was discovered after a former FTT employee came forward with concerns about the way his former company handled data. The results of an investigation led by the Office of Information Technology unveiled that the contractor was indeed failing to comply with contractual obligations.
It's not yet known who was the third party involved that got its hands on information such as names and account details, but because the Commission didn't know anything about them prior to the event, they couldn't assure employees that the data was not utilized in anything illegal.
A final decision has not been taken concerning FTT but as a precaution, the system has been taken offline until further analysis and employees have been getting clearance for their transactions by sending emails to the ethics office of the organization.
Yet another situation emerges where consumers are left unprotected in front of a potential attack on their personal assets. This again comes to show that a permanent monitoring of our financial records is recommended in order to avoid unpleasant situations.