Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, a multinational investment bank and financial services giant, is being sued by former and current clients for allegedly failing to make sure account numbers, social security details, and other personal information were deleted from decommissioned hardware. On July 9, Morgan Stanley alerted customers that an external contractor did not completely erase hardware from two closed data centers in 2016. What’s more, in 2019, the company revealed that old servers in a handful of branches might have unencrypted customer data, per emails and letters Morgan Stanley has sent to their brokers and patrons.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in New York, is attempting to certify a national and California class of clients claiming invasion of privacy and negligence. Another lawsuit was filed on Friday, making parallel claims of poor cybersecurity methods and violation of state unfair competition law.
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