Now it's Pfizer's employees' spouses' turn to suffer data compromise

For the fourth time in as many months, some Pfizer Inc employees have been affected by a compromise involving personal data -- though this time in a somewhat indirect fashion, and not as a result of a security breach at the company itself.

The most recent incident involves Wheels Inc., a Des Plaines, Ill.-based company that leases cars to Pfizer employees and their spouses.

In August, Wheels discovered that an online web application used to collect information from spouses of Pfizer employees failed to employ proper encryption during the data transfer process, according to Stratford Dick, director of marketing at Wheels. As a result, personal information sent by about 1,800 spouses of Pfizer employees was transmitted in a non-encrypted fashion to Wheels during a two-week period in August, Dick said. The data included names, addresses, dates of birth and driver's license numbers. Social Security Numbers were not collected as part of the process, Dick said.