OTTAWA - Senior bureaucrats at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC) said Thursday they've tightened the department's rules after employees lost the personal information of more than half-a-million Canadians last year.
Deputy minister Ian Shugart told MPs on a Commons committee probing the massive data breach that a series of mistakes were made by employees in the lead up to HRSDC losing an external hard drive and a USB key containing the sensitive personal information.
The two incidents in late 2012 left officials scrambling desperately to try and find the missing electronic storage devices before advising the victims the data had been lost, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.
