Reports of data theft often conjure up images of malicious hackers breaking into remote databases to filch Social Security numbers, credit card records and other personal information. But a lot of the time, the scenario is much simpler: A careless worker at company or agency with weak security policies falls prey to a low-tech street thug who runs off with a laptop loaded with private data. In the biggest case, the Department of Veterans Affairs recently lost data on 26.5 million veterans and military personnel stored on a laptop and external drive stolen from the suburban Washington home of a VA employee. Security experts and some privacy groups say simple measures could protect data if a laptop falls into nefarious hands. They include encrypting the information so it’s nearly impossible to access without the correct credentials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“It is shocking how many of these are stolen laptops and that fact that the users of the laptops did not use encryption to secure the data,” Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said of recent data losses. If thieves read the newspaper, they can readily figure out that they have got more than just a piece of hardware.”<\/p>\n
Since June 2005, there have been at least 29 known cases of misplaced or stolen laptops with data such as Social Security numbers, health records and addresses of millions of people, according to the Privacy Rights Clearing House, a San Diego-based nonprofit that tracks data thefts. So far, there is no evidence the stolen data were used for identity theft or other nefarious purposes. Hospitals, universities, consulting firms, banks, health insurers and even a YMCA have lost personal data.<\/p>\n
The portable computers are usually protected by passwords needed to boot them up, but the data on their drives are still accessible.<\/p>\n
Ernst & Young, which has 30,000 laptops used by its highly mobile staff of consultants, is encrypting all contents on the computers, according to company spokesman Charlie Perkins.<\/p>\n
In several cases, laptops were lost or stolen when employees violated company rules by leaving them in parked cars or in their homes. <\/p>\n
http:\/\/seattlepi.nwsource.com\/business\/1700AP_Laptops_Security.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2626,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions\/2626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cybersecurityinstitute.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}