Morgan Stanley Smith Barney To Pay Penalty To Settle SEC Charges

(RTTNews) - The Securities and Exchange Commission found that Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC or MSSB has failed to protect the personal identifying information, or PII, of approximately 15 million customers. MSSB has agreed to pay a $35 million penalty.

As far back as 2015, MSSB failed to properly dispose of devices containing customers' personal identifying information. The SEC investigation found that MSSB devices including servers and hard drives, some of which contained customer PII, were resold on an internet auction site without removal of customer PII. The SEC also found that MSSB failed to properly safeguard customer PII and properly dispose of consumer report information when it decommissioned local office and branch servers as part of a broader hardware refresh program.