Morgan Stanley loses 34,000 customer records

Two unencrypted CDs containing customer records go missing from brokerage giant

Brokerage firm Morgan Stanley has alerted 34,000 of its customers that two disks containing their details have gone missing while on route to New York State Department tax offices.

Clients were alerted to the loss in June but the details have only now come to light.

The CDs containing the data were protected by passwords but the data on them was not encrypted, a Morgan Stanley spokesman told financial advice site Credit.com, which first reported the data breach. There was no evidence of criminal intent at this stage, he added.

Morgan Stanley said the package that was supposed to contain the CDs arrived at the New York State tax offices intact but the CDs were missing.

News of the breach comes hot on the heels of analyst warnings that data breaches are increasingly being used as the source of personal information used by cyber crooks to make phishing attacks more effective.

Morgan Stanley's press offices in the UK was asked to comment but had not responded at the time of writing.

The company has offered those affected a year's credit monitoring subscription.