• U.S. regulators penalized Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) $35 million for failing to protect customer data, leading to the online auction of some computer hardware containing sensitive client data.

• The U.S. SEC acknowledged that the Wall Street bank’s wealth management business failed to protect information identifying 15 million customers over five years.

• From at least 2015, MS failed to dispose of devices storing clients’ data adequately.

• MS hired a moving company that did not specialize in discarding data and tasked it with disabling thousands of servers and hard drives.

• The moving company subsequently sold thousands of the bank’s devices, some of which contained customer data, to a third party before resale on an online auction site.

• MS recovered some but not most of the equipment. MS also failed to protect customer data while shutting down some servers on its network.

• The SEC heightened scrutiny of Wall Street’s record-keeping practices, the Financial Times reports.

• In December, JP Morgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM) agreed to pay U.S. regulators $200 million for failing to maintain records of employees’ communications on personal devices.

• Price Action: MS shares traded lower by 1.56% at $87.34 on the last check Tuesday.

• Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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