A Corporate-issued Laptop Stolen From a Lenovo Employee in September Contained Unencrypted Payroll Data on APAC Staff (theregister.co.uk)
A corporate-issued laptop lifted from a Lenovo employee in Singapore contained a cornucopia of unencrypted payroll data on staff based in the Asia Pacific region, news outlet The Register reports. From the report: Details of the massive screw-up reached us from Lenovo staffers, who are simply bewildered at the monumental mistake. Lenovo has sent letters of shame to its employees confessing the security snafu. "We are writing to notify you that Lenovo has learned that one of our Singapore employees recently had the work laptop stolen on 10 September 2018," the letter from Lenovo HR and IT Security, dated 21 November, stated.
"Unfortunately, this laptop contained payroll information, including employee name, monthly salary amounts and bank account numbers for Asia Pacific employees and was not encrypted." Lenovo employs more than 54,000 staff worldwide, the bulk of whom are in China.
"Unfortunately, this laptop contained payroll information, including employee name, monthly salary amounts and bank account numbers for Asia Pacific employees and was not encrypted." Lenovo employs more than 54,000 staff worldwide, the bulk of whom are in China.
When I worked for the Govt, all salary information was a public record. Earth did not stop spinning. Depending on how they obfuscate whatever the identity credentials are in their (in the US, that would be social security numbers) there might be some issue, but there's no enough information in the article tell
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
including employee name, monthly salary amounts
So in other words, this may be a rare leak that hurts the company, and benefits employees. Generally when employees find out other people's salaries, they aren't mad at the other employees, they're mad at the company and demand raises.
So, laptop thief, care to release the payroll data?
Give me your bank account and routing number and I'll put 5 million in there right away for you to hold for me!
Why does the system even allow people to download this sort of data?
No security system survives idiot employees who just email excel sheets to each other.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
I should put something clever here. Maybe someday.
So in other words, this may be a rare leak that hurts the company, and benefits employees. Generally when employees find out other people's salaries, they aren't mad at the other employees, they're mad at the company and demand raises.
I actually saw something like this a while back. A secretary at our company was photocopying payroll data including pay rates for all the employees on the campus. She accidentally left it on the copier. By the time she realized her mistake and can scurrying back to get it, it had already been copied and distributed and soon enough was posted prominently around the building. So everyone knew what everyone else was making and the company had a lot of explaining to do for certain... discrepancies.
I've always been puzzled why employees are so willing to go along with not sharing their pay data since keeping it a secret generally only benefits the company.
Interesting how you completely glossed over the bank account numbers part in the list of data.
every time you write a check or pay by ACH or deposit a check or use your debit card you tell someone your bank account number. This is not a problem
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You need to Bitlocker Encrypt your stuff.
Ask Microsoft Premier to assist with MBAM Deployment.
If your place of business does not have mandatory training for employees that handle confidential and financial data, then they're doing it wrong.
Now if an employee doesn't follow the guidelines provided, which happens pretty often, then disciplinary measures are appropriate.
> I've always been puzzled why employees are so willing to go along with not sharing their pay data since keeping it a secret generally only benefits the company.
Often, a manager is budgeted a certain amount of money for raises. Employees are competing with each other for chunks of the budget.
If you have more experience, or more valuable experience, than your direct boss it might be good to keep quiet. It can be harder to get a raise when your boss knows you already make more than they do, and they think they should get that chunk of the salary budget. Similarly for peer employees who may have been at the company longer, but perhaps are less productive or have less specialized skills.
The last time I switched jobs, one company that wanted to hire me increased their offer by 25% to compete with the other company that wanted me. I'm sure that 25% increase in the offer would put my salary higher than many of my co-workers. It would have been in my best interest to take the money and be quiet, while doing good work to earn a raise a year later. Publicizing to all of my co-workers that I was being paid much more than them wouldn't have been helpful to me.
On the contrary, if you think other employees with lower qualifications are being paid more, sure that could be an argument for you getting a raise. If you can show that you're better qualified and more productive than Bob, you can argue that that your salary should be at least as high as Bob's. So it depends on where you think you are on the scale, near the top or near the bottom.
On the third hand, if you're making less than Sally, finding that out might only piss you off. If you ask the boss "why does Sally get paid more than me?", the answer might be "because Sally isn't an idiot. Sally can write an email and actually know the meaning of the words she uses". :)
In the end, what matters to me is paying my bills. How much a co-worker makes doesn't matter to me. For comparing my pay to what I could be making, I can compare to industry averages etc. A few data points of co-workers doesn't tell me as much as industry statistics, particularly because none of my co-workers has exactly the same qualifications as I. It's more useful for me to compare industry averages for people with similar qualifications.
Companies are always so tight with their pay grades. They don't want the plebs to know *exactly* how much the C-level folks are fucking them. They don't want the chicks to know how many guys are making 2x as they make in the same job. They don't want the guy who just keeps his head down to perk up and wonder why all the loudmouth assholes make more than him but do less. Hack these corporate bastards and post their pay levels on every pastebin and blog you can find. The corporate feudal dickheads hate when their payroll figures are released, which can only mean it's a good thing.
Charity drives, funeral collections, and alike broadcast account numbers in the open for people to deposit to.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Any employer issued laptop should have the entire hard drive encrypted. The fact that it wasn't is not the fault of the employee who's laptop got stolen. It is the fault of the IT department and, ultimately, senior management.
here's a portal providng lists of ACH numbers
http://hcacaring.org/util/docu...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you have more experience, or more valuable experience, than your direct boss it might be good to keep quiet.
That's just the company playing employees off against each other. Experience doesn't mean shit. Performance does. If someone is doing the same job and getting the same results then they should be getting paid the same. Going to a fancy school or what you did in a previous job does-not/should-not matter. Again, this is something that in most cases benefits the company to the detriment of some/most/all of the workers. And if the boss can't justify a pay disparity with an explanation based in some kind of evidence of performance then that's a problem.
In the end, what matters to me is paying my bills. How much a co-worker makes doesn't matter to me.
Really? If you are doing the same work and getting paid less for it that wouldn't bother you? You might feel very differently if you were a woman or minority and getting paid less than your white male colleagues - that happens all the time. My wife works with some people who just ran into that. They didn't know they were being paid less than a male in their company even though they did the same work with similar to better results and some had longer tenure with the company and more experience. When this was discovered they were justifiably pissed and it could have resulted in a lawsuit. (the company to their credit fixed the problem as soon as it was realized)
All I want is what's fair. And what's fair is based on work output.
Is it really? Fair is a VERY nebulous term. Work output can be one measure of fair but not the only one and sometimes not the most important one and sometime it is impossible to determine. Work output can be extremely difficult to objectively measure for some jobs. If you're making widgets on an assembly line it's pretty easy but most jobs are not that easy to measure. What units do you measure the productivity of a secretary answering phone calls with that would be useful in comparison to an engineer designing a widget? Both jobs need to be done and not everything can be or should be ranked. Companies with rank and yank systems don't tend to do very well in the long run because of the resentment and fear such systems instill.
To me this is like how Ohio can have fancy Botts' Dots that don't get scraped off by snowplows but here in California we have to put them into holes instead because we are paying for Ohio's road maintenance.
And I pay more money into our health care system than the value of care I receive so that my grandmother can get her health care paid for. That's not a bad thing. Some pay more so we all benefit. Someday my turn will come for someone to support me. You are trying to justify selfishness as some sort of virtue even though it results in a worse outcome for more people. California's well being depends in no tiny part on the well being of Ohio (and Michigan and Alabama and...). Sometimes California gives and sometimes they receive. That's what being in a society is about - we cooperate and support each other. At one time Ohio had a bigger population and bigger economy than California. By your argument California should have gone begging.
There's only so much money budgeted for salaries and every dollar an underperformer is paid effectively represents a dollar stolen from all of the employees who are actually doing their jobs.
Again with the selfishness. Someone is always going to be below average but evidently you missed the memo that business is a team sport and it's not a zero sum game. Help your fellow man and you can both benefit more than you might otherwise.
Haven't learned much in your fifteen years, have you.
Are most laptops not encrypted by default (behind a password)? Or are they saying that if the person gains access by guessing or brute forcing the password then the files themselves are un encypted?
> Experience doesn't mean shit. Performance does. If someone is doing the same job and getting the same results then they should be getting paid the same.
You can "should" all you want, but these are the facts.
If Linus's resume has the experience "I created Linux and managed it for 20 years", he's going to be able to get a certain salary.
If Bob's resume shows his experience is "I saw a Linux computer once", he's going to be able to get a certain salary.
Bob can whine all day about "my code is just as good, I *should* make just as much as Linus", but that's not reality. Reality is your qualifications, your education, expertise, demonstrated results, and communication skills determine how much competing companies will offer you, and therefore how much your company needs to pay to keep you.
You can think all day that your performance is as good as mine in designing security controls, but because I have proven experience and skills in that area, I'm going to get better job offers than you in that field. That's reality.
no biggee. i did that once accidentally on a team level review communication (a Microsoft bug in Excel OLE) and then realized it certainly did settle down what they already knew. who gets paid what for who does the work, and those that just show up and get paid.. paid for performance, not seniority... i could not fire someone directly because of HR and their stupid rules of rehabilitation due to poor performance, at first I thought.. oh my.. but then I realized, well, it just shows my good judgement.. there. now would everyone shut up and realize, you get paid for what you do... i just proved it... if you don't like it... go get a different job...
Yer fuckt America. The chink spies are three or four levels deep now.
corporate-issued laptop lifted from a Lenovo employee in Singapore
... there was a crime in Singapore?!?
LENOVO screwing up? You gotta be kidding!
Your face, age weight, aren't tens of thousands of people already have your bank account number since you paid your bills with a check. It's in data bases anyone can purchase.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.