Oracle IRM, the official blog

It has been a while since I commented on a data loss incident. I've been concentrating on documenting more about how Oracle IRM works and some of the features. However the past few days have seen an almost farcical play of events between Rocky Mountain Bank and Google.

The bank mistakenly sent an email containing an attachment which contained confidential information on 1,325 individual and business customers that included their names, addresses, tax identification or Social Security numbers and loan information. Ouch! After realizing the mistake, the bank employee tried to recall the email, but obviously this failed... as anyone who's made this mistake knows that once an email is sent beyond your own email system, it is very hard to control what happens to it after delivery.

After the sending of another email asking the accidental recipient to respond returned only silence, the bank contacted Google in an attempt to have the information deleted from the persons inbox. Google quite rightly refused stating this violated their privacy policy.

So the bank has sued Google to identify the account and assist with protecting the information. This isn't going to be a cheap exercise and the loss in customer confidence for the bank is going to hurt in an age where banks are going out of business.

Obviously securing this document would've saved a whole lot of hassle. Oracle IRM would not only have ensured the content is safe if they sent it to the wrong user, but there are many ways to implement IRM such that the information is not just secured as it is sent via email but also the document is secured from source when the document was created.