Time Warner has told employees that they've misplaced personal data of 600,000 current and former employees.

The tapes, part of a routine shipment being taken to the site by off-site data storage company Iron Mountain didn't include data about Time Warner customers, the company said in a statement.

From Time Warner says data on 600,000 workers lost | By Lucas Mearian, Computerworld
Referenced Tue May 03 2005 14:15:33 GMT-0600 (MDT)

You have to protect backups of personal data as carefully as you protect the real data, maybe more so as this story shows. Your backup data is subject to being taken off site in very dense aggregations. What's more, you have to understand and track the chain of custody, especially when the custody will extend to vendors.