12:45 PM -- Iron Mountain Inc. (NYSE: IRM) has lost more tapes. So is that a reason to cast aspersions?
The Boston Globe reported last Thursday that Iron Mountain acknowledged misplacing two backup tapes from City National Bank, a Los Angeles subsidiary of City National Corp. (NYSE: CYN). The tapes went missing April 28, just a month after Iron Mountain admitted losing tapes containing hundreds of thousands of records from Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX). (See A Tale of Lost Tapes.)
This time, there's no word on how many records were lost, but in a letter to customers, City National EVP Jan R. Cloyde states: "Names, Social Security numbers, account numbers and in some cases, other account information were on these tapes." The bank has reported no incidents of malfeasance related to the lost tapes.
As to keeping Iron Mountain services, a CNB spokeswoman says, "Right now, we're focused on notifying our clients and working with them to protect the security of their information."
Now we ask you, Should Iron Mountain be in disgrace? After all, it's a big company, one that "makes over 5 million pickups and deliveries of backup tapes yearly with 99.999% accuracy." How can such a firm be expected to account for a couple of lost canisters out of the many thousands it delivers safely? Get real.
