What is it about government laptops and security?
I'm not sure if I'd bring this event up ordinarily, but because I know a fair number of veterans stop by here due to recent stories, I thought I'd pass it on:
A portable hard drive that may contain the personal information of up to 48,000 veterans may have been stolen, the Department of Veterans Affairs and a lawmaker said Friday.An employee at the VA medical center in Birmingham, Ala. reported the external hard drive missing on Jan. 22. The drive was used to back up information on the employee's office computer. It may have contained data from research projects, the department said.
The employee also said the hard drive may have had personal information on some veterans, although portions of the data were protected. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson said that the VA and the FBI are investigating.
Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., said that the personal information of up to 48,000 veterans was on the hard drive and the records of up to 20,000 of them were not encrypted.
No info on the VA home page as of right now. The link to news releases has a 1-paragraph item linking to a full news release, released Friday. (This release day might be coincidence, but it might also have something to do with the fact that a lot of government agencies release unpleasant news on Fridays -- usually late in the afternoon -- because they know the journalists are scrambling to finish up their weekend stories and go home and that they have short attention spans and will have moved on come Monday. There was a "West Wing" episode called "Take Out the Trash Day" that featured this phenomenon.)
Now, this release date, keep in mind, pertains to an event that was first brought to the VA's attention on Jan. 22. I don't know why.
If we don't start automatically encrypting everything on government laptops, we're going to have to stop government laptops from leaving the building. Which, of course, defeats the purpose of having a laptop.
Just sayin'.