A laptop owned by consultancy Deloitte which held information about staff under BSkyB’s pension plan has been stolen, Computing can reveal.

The computer was taken from a Deloitte employee in September at a public place and contained names, dates of birth and salary figures to be used for audit work on the broadcaster’s pension scheme.

BSkyB said the data did not include bank or address details and claimed it is highly unlikely that the information will be mishandled due to the laptop’s reliable data security set-up.

“The laptop was protected by a number of security measures, including passwords, user IDs and encryption of the majority of the information, so we are confident that the risk of data access or misuse is low,” said a BSkyB spokeswoman.

Both companies describe the incident as being an “opportunistic theft”.

“The thief could not have been aware that the bag – which was not a laptop bag – contained a laptop and therefore the theft was not targeted,” said BSkyB in a letter seen by Computing that was sent to all employees whose data may have been stored in the computer.

Since the theft, the police have been informed and an investigation is underway. Deloitte has changed user authentication details at its servers as a preventive measure.

The theft’s effect on the two companies’ relationship is not yet known, but Deloitte and BSkyB are reviewing procedures to minimise the risk of further such incidents.