LANCASTER, Pa. -- A laptop containing personal information on more than
12,000 Armstrong World Industries current and former employees was
stolen last week. ... According to the letter, the laptop was in the
vehicle of an outside auditor when it was stolen. ... The personal
information includes: 

*         Home addresses 

*         Phone numbers 

*         Social Security numbers 

*         Pay

(http://www.wgal.com/news/9571588/detail.html?subid=22100741&qs=1;bp=t)

 

It seems to me that, after a number of these incidents in the past year
or two, someone would wake up to the fact that keeping this kind of data
on a laptop is insecure.  With the proliferation of external drives and
flash/thumb/USB drives with gigabytes of capacity, it is much simpler to
set policy requiring the use of the external drives or removable media
for sensitive and private data.  Of course those people who "lose"
laptops will most likely also "lose" smaller media and drives.  But the
theft of a laptop should not result in the theft of the data.

 

 

Ginny Jones 
(Virginia A. Jones, CRM, FAI) 
Records Manager 
Information Technology Division 
Newport News Dept. of Public Utilities 
Newport News, VA 
[log in to unmask] 

 


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