September 21st, 2006
Commerce Department Loses 1,137 Laptops … the Good News is, Over a 5 year Span
By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews
The bad news is that the Commerce Department has lost 1,137 laptops. The good news is that these losses took place since 2001. More good news is that they believe that no information has been used from any of these laptops. Of these losses, 672 were lost by the Census Bureau, 325 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 246 of the computers lost by the Census Bureau contained personal data, but only 3 of the NOAA computers did.
“All of the equipment that was lost or stolen contained protections to prevent a breach of personal information,” Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez said in a statement. “The amount of missing computers is high, but fortunately, the vulnerability for data misuse is low.” Source: Yahoo! News
We Say: More good news: if you just look at the number of computers lost that had personal information, and just the two largest losses, there were only 249 lost with personal data. That means, over 5 years, only 50 were lost per year with any data that could be misused. Plus the data was protected (whatever that means, since they were vague). Don’t you feel better now?
Sloth says:
All of the equipment that was lost or stolen contained protections to prevent a breach of personal information
i hope those protections were more effective than the protections used to prevent the laptops from getting stolen or lost in the first place. Somehow, I doubt it.
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:33 am