Friday, August 11, 2006

Dept of Transporation Stolen - 133,000 identifies

Via SecurityFocus -

A federal agent's stolen laptop in Florida has put 133,000 people's personal identities at risk.

In what is becoming a regular occurrance with U.S. government and military organizations, the laptop was stolen from a vehicle and contained sensitive personal information on individuals that was not encrypted in any way.

The Miami Herald is reporting the annoucment by the federal U.S. Department of Transportation, which discovered the theft on July 27th. The department claims the data had been previously encrypted, but was not encrypted at the time the laptop was stolen. The data contains the names, addresses, birthdates and Social Security numbers of Florida citizens. A second laptop was stored in the vehicle but was not stolen, puzzling investigators.

Recent laptop thefts have affected a number of U.S. agencies, including the U.S. Navy and the high-profile theft at the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs that contained the identities of 26.5 million veterans. Back in June, the U.S. government issued a memo mandating the use of encryption and two-factor authentication on civilian government computers containing sensitive information.

This is my favorite quote of the day - "The department [of Transportation] claims the data had been previously encrypted, but was not encrypted at the time the laptop was stolen."

Why even bring that fact up?

No comments:

Post a Comment