Laptop Losers Hall of Shame

Personal data is a toxic substance... By Anonymous on October 15, 2009, 4:55 amFormer Sun CPO Michelle Dennedy used to put it like this: organisations should treat personal data in much the same way as toxic material. 1 - if possible, avoid having it in the first place; 2 - if you must have it, focus on containment; 3 - understand clearly what you are going to do it there's a leak... It's a very useful metaphor. Several other commenters have asked "why was this data on the laptops?", but no-one has put the more fundamental question: "Why did most of these organisations have, e.g., social security numbers in the first place?". In most of the cases cited, there was no business justification for them to have that data at all, let alone allow it to be downloaded and carried around on a laptop.

Organizations spend millions of dollars By Anonymous on August 23, 2009, 9:42 amOrganizations spend millions of dollars ensuring their infrastructure is secure, and then release their data to the world on a laptop. Doesn't make sense to me. Abercrombie & Fitch on Sale, Hoodies, Jeans, T-Shirts, Pants, Polos abercrombie and fitch

Slideshow unviewableBy apeshansky on February 18, 2009, 4:49 pmI don't know what exactly is wrong, but in Firefox the flash window to the right of the slide covers most of the text, and in IE, while the text is not covered, it is missing (#slide6, e.g.)

Not real losersBy Anonymous on December 17, 2008, 10:41 amIf you want to talk about lost data, you should come to the UK. In 2007 Nationwide, lost a laptop with 11m customer details on it. Also in 2007, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (the tax people) lost CDs (in the post) with 25m peoples bank details. We can make you Americans look like small time losers.

It's quite simple, reallyBy Matt Konwiser on July 16, 2008, 9:53 amThe best way to keep a corporation's data safe is to not to keep it on a laptop in the first place.

Its NOT all the cost of newBy Anonymous on June 2, 2008, 1:40 pmIts NOT all the cost of new software. As one who was three times violated by one of the offenders, it is clear to me that some self appointed *very important people* must carry this data around to justify there worth. AND they tend to be technically incompetent in managing the encryption tools that they already have available to them.

A solution that can protect your laptop and its data!By Anonymous on June 2, 2008, 12:17 pmhttp://www1.alcatel-lucent.com/enterprise/en/products/enterprise-security/omniaccess3500/index.html# Check out this solution!

In some ways the theft ofBy Anonymous on May 31, 2008, 3:43 pmIn some ways the theft of the Nashville, TN Voting center had a positive outcome. It had a HUGE ripple effect throughout not only the City, but also the State government. As a result, we are now looking at mandatory laptop encryption for all new laptops assigned. I'm proud to be a part of this long-needed solution, even though I was also an affected user of the original theft. I did sign up for the free year of Identity Theft protection as a result, also. I've got a big meeting about the encryption mandate next week. Wish me luck in convincing the brass :)

Why does the data have to be on the LaptopBy Anonymous on May 28, 2008, 2:21 pmSince virtually all of the major data breaches have involved stolen laptops, why, oh why do the data need to be on the laptop? Back in the olden days, dumb terminals or very thin clients would be used to access sensitive data for homework or field work. The only disadvantage was that a connection was required. This would prevent use of airplane travel time for performing work that required used of the sensitive data. This would be a very small price to pay for protection and accountability for access to and use of the data. Requiring that secured and encrypted connections to the main host by the field and home workers using portable devices is a very small price to pay for urgently needed safeguarding of sensitive data.

It's even more embarrasingBy Anonymous on May 25, 2008, 8:52 pmIt's even more embarrasing than $10 per laptop - there are several open source/free encryption programs available, as secure as if not more so than the proprietory programs. It's just plain laziness/not giving a monkeys.

While it is true that theBy Anonymous on May 24, 2008, 9:32 pmWhile it is true that the sum of the number of accounts in the 3 incidents does add up to 546,600, there is aboslutely no way, using the information provided in the article, to say for certain that some of the same employees were not affected in two or more of the incidents. The total number of employees can only be stated to be between the sum of all the accounts (546,600) and the largest individual incident (382,000) ...

there is currently no methodBy Anonymous on May 24, 2008, 12:09 pmthere is currently no method of cracking truecrypt on a laptop that has already been powered down for a minute or 2 sure theres brute forcing but that will take literally thousands of trillions of years as shown on the security now podcast the problem is that many companies refuse to use proper security because it will inconvenience their workers or them self I have done IT jobs for companies that that left the password for the administrator account as blank so anyone could use it. They may be local small businesses but theres still no excuse for doing that. especially when it is not too hard for a random person to work in with a trojan on a flash drive with a auto run script and plug it in,wait a second or 2 then unplug it and their computers are infected

Too cheap?By Anonymous on May 24, 2008, 3:18 amFree disk-encryption systems: Windows: TrueCrypt (full disk encryption) Linux: Encrypted LVM (/boot is unencrypted, but everything else is) MacOSX: Filevault (home folder encryption) None of these cost any money, and two of them are supplied by default with the OS. Even if you want to argue that other commercial software is better, the point is that some encryption is better than no encryption, and employing any of the above is far better than allowing sensitive data walking out the front door in plaintext. Doing the latter is simply negligence.

Data on stolen laptops.By Anonymous on May 24, 2008, 12:39 amWhat I don't understand is why is this data on Laptops in the first place. Organizations spend millions of dollars ensuring their infrastructure is secure, and then release their data to the world on a laptop. Doesn't make sense to me.

Laziness, Lack of Paranoia By Anonymous on May 23, 2008, 10:33 pmSimply put, personal data encryption is rare because it is less convenient. The software can be as cheap as free; However, the challenge is using it. A simple multi-platform encryption application is available "Truecrypt". It is freely available, open source and effective.