A US IT company has been fined for $3.1m after it was found to have illegally outsourced work for a government contact to an offshore company in India.

Focused Technologies, the IT company in question, outsourced a New York State Industries for the Disabled (NYSID) and New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) contract for the digitalisation and indexation of nearly 22 million fingerprint cards to an Indian sub-contractor based in Mumbai back in 2008.

The cards included personal data such as social security numbers, dates of birth and basic physical characteristics for 22 million people. Focused shared the information illegally with the Indian sub-contractor since the latter did not have permission to access the confidential data.

The state of New York requires companies dealing with confidential information to carry out their work inside the state. The information must also be handled by workers who have passed a criminal background check.

US authorities have stressed that the Indian sub-contractor was unaware of the illegal status of the deal.

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