Photocopier Hard Drive Exposes Tommy Bahamas Restaurant

By: Michael Rey
Topics: News

In just one day the CBS affiliate station KPHO in Phoenix was able to replicate the type of results of our investigation into the documents saved on the hard drives of digital copiers.

According to KPHO reporter Pat McReynolds, they asked local data retrieval specialist Clayton Moline to take a look at four hard drives he pulled from copy machines that were slated for recycling.

"After just 15 to 20 minutes, we got the hard drives from those machines and started to analyze them on site," said Moline.

No surprise that they found something. A lot of somethings. This time the sensitive documents were from a Tommy Bahamas chain restaurant in Scottsdale. They pulled names and Social Security numbers of all their employees and copies of payroll and traveler's checks.

"Our employees are very important to Tommy Bahamas, and we take the protection of their data very seriously," Doug Wood, the president and chief operating officer of Tommy Bahama's told CBS 5. "We have strict policies how all employee data is handled. We take great pains to limit access."

The station notes that the drives in this story were used as an example of how easy the process of pulling data off them can be and that they were on their way to being scrubbed.

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by kickingant April 21, 2010 6:07 PM EDT: I lame the blame at the feet of the recycling company that gave CBS the hard drives. The article notes that they were going to be scrubbed before the reporters waylayed them. Tommy Bahamas contracted that company to dispose of the data safely and instead has made headlines because of a security breach by the recycler.; Reply to this comment

by us_1776 April 21, 2010 3:17 PM EDT

I lay the blame for these breaches of security squarely at the feet of the copier industry. They knew that these machines were using internal unencrypted hard drives and yet never made that known to the vast majority of customers. These copier companies should be required to pay for the scrubbing of every single hard drive from these used or discarded machines.

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by IndiasWorstTechSupport April 21, 2010 3:40 PM EDT: I would lay the blame on the "software creator" that allowed the programs to save copies of the data and the easy ability to retrieve the info.


by bobnjersey April 21, 2010 5:33 PM EDT: [I would lay the blame on the "software creator" that allowed the programs to save copies of the data and the easy ability to retrieve the info. ]

the 'software creator' either worked directly for ... or was contracted by ... the company making the copier ... so the responsibility lies with them for not defining appropriate security standards for their products.