A U.S. banking regulator says an employee was found to have downloaded a large number of files onto thumb drives a week before he retired. When the former employee was contacted, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said he “was unable to locate or return the thumb drives to the agency.” The reassuring news is that the information appears to not have been disclosed to the public or misused in any way, according to the OCC. Metro.us reports: Before he retired in November 2015, the former employee downloaded a large number of files onto two removable thumb drives though the incident was only detected last month during a routine security review, the OCC said in a statement. The stolen data was encrypted, the agency said. The Office of the Comptroller, along with the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is one of the nation’s three most influential bank regulators that is tasked with protecting consumers and financial markets. The OCC has deemed the breach a “major incident” because the devices containing the information are not recoverable and more than 10,000 records were removed, the agency said. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the case, noted that a large batch of unclassified personnel records were among the cache.

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Source: Slashdot – US Bank Regulator Notifies Congress of Major Data Security Breach