The company trying to speed travelers through airport security lines said it found its laptop containing the personal information of 33,000 people about a week after reporting it stolen.
But the Transportation Security Administration suspended any new enrollments in the fast-growing program because of the failure of Verified Identity Pass to encrypt customer data stored on its computers.
The New York-based company said a software fix will take a matter of days and it sought to ensure customers the missing computer didn’t contain any data such as credit card or Social Security numbers.
“We apologize for the confusion, but in an abundance of caution, we treated this unaccounted for laptop as a serious potential breach,” said Verified Identity Pass CEO Steven Brill. “A preliminary investigation shows no personal information was compromised.”
Denver has represented a rapidly growing market for the company, whose Clear program charges members a yearly $128 fee to use separate security lanes to get through airport checkpoints faster. It so far has about 20,000 enrollees in the Denver area.
The roughly 200,000 travelers who already use the Clear service at airports nationwide have not been affected by the incident, which is still under investigation.
The company laptop went missing July 26 from a locked office at San Francisco International Airport. It showed up again a week later in the same office, according to a company spokeswoman.
The New York-based company began notifying all of the online applicants whose preliminary data were on the allegedly stolen laptop. The laptop did not contain the encrypted iris photos, fingerprints and other background data applicants submit in person later in the process, the company said.
The company said the data on the recovered laptop had already been secured by “two levels of password protection.” But the company said it is working on security changes that will encrypt all personal…