Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has admitted to losing track of data tapes containing customer information for almost 20 million accounts in a major security breach in 2016, which it chose not to disclose to account holders. Australia’s biggest bank by assets has said that there was no evidence the information – names, addresses, account numbers and transaction details – spanning 16 years was compromised and its decision not to tell customers was justified by an investigation showing the tapes were “most likely” disposed of as intended. CBA said it had put monitoring mechanisms in place for the accounts and notified regulators as well as briefing them on the investigation results. It added that the tapes did not contain passwords, personal identification numbers “or other data that could be used to enable account fraud”. CBA said the data were not encrypted.

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Financial Times