Recently there was an incident in several New Jersey banks where bank employees were involved in a plot to sell private information of bank clients. The information would then have been resold to lawyers and collection agencies. The banks share some responsibility for this, since it's up to them to do everything they can to protect private information of their clients. Although they can't ensure the honesty of all their employees, there is quite a lot they can do, including implementing security procedures, like encryption, and making sure as few employees as possible have access to private information. This article spells out some of these safeguards. Bank Systems & Technology : Security Pros Respond to New Jersey Bank Breach