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.
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