data theft

A Bank of America call center employee has pleaded guilty to charges that he stole sensitive client information and then tried to sell it for cash.

Lance Watson has done a little bit of everything -- from working on a fishing boat in the Florida Keys, to digging ditches and delivering pizzas. His job at a company installing and troubleshooting voicemail systems took him to a project in the Arctic Circle, where he went ice fishing and ate whale meat with an Inuit named Harvey. It's been a long and interesting road, to say the least. Always "the computer guy" to his friends and family, but never making a career out of it until a lucky meeting one day took him on the path to becoming an e-discovery and digital forensics expert, Lance's career goal was to have a job that gave him stories to tell - and he's got plenty.

A survey of 945 individuals who were laid off, fired or quit their jobs in the past 12 months shows that 59% admitted to stealing company data and 67% used their former company's confidential information to leverage a new job.

HP and Symantec are notifying workers of a data breach after thieves stole employee laptops from both companies.