Are Private Businesses or the Government More Likely to Compromise Your Private Data?
Yet another report of compromised private data from the US government:
1,100 Laptops Missing From Commerce Dept. - washingtonpost.com
"More than 1,100 laptop computers have vanished from the Department of Commerce since 2001, including nearly 250 from the Census Bureau containing such personal information as names, incomes and Social Security numbers, federal officials said yesterday."
Names, income, and social security numbers? That doesn't sound good. The Washington Post story mentions that the Commerce department knows, "of no instances in which information from the missing laptops had been improperly accessed." Is that reassuring? What percentage of people who's identity is stolen, credit ruined, etc., ever manage to determine the initial security breach that led to their nightmare? It seems likely that a department that can't keep track of laptops may also have trouble tracking the impact of lost personal data.
Here is a summary of additional recent breaches:
"With its disclosure, Commerce is the latest federal agency to admit in recent months that it had lost laptops with sensitive personal data. In May, an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs lost a laptop containing unencrypted information on about 26.5 million people. Three months later, Veterans Affairs acknowledged that a second computer, with information on about 38,000 hospital patients in Pennsylvania, was also missing."
Whomever has the government contract to continually replace lost laptops is really raking it in.
