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Stolen State Worker's Laptop Holds Personal Info of 1M People
When a person gets a laptop stolen, it sucks. When that person is an employee of the Department of Human Services (DHS), it sucks a lot worse for a lot more people.
On April 3rd, a laptop containing up to 1 million people's personal information was stolen from an Oklahoma DHS worker's car, KOCO News in Oklahoma City reported on Thursday evening. According to DHS officials, the laptop contained the names, Social Security numbers, and birth dates of people that have received state aid through programs like Medicaid and Child Care Assistance. Those affected by the possible security breach (officials say it is unlikely that the data could be accessed because it requires a password) will be alerted via mail sometime this week. As of now, no one's information has been accessed or compromised by the thief.
We were already a little paranoid about giving out our personal information, and situations like this don't help. [From: KOCO.com]
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Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsAngelaApr 25th 2009 11:09AM
If employees of any agency, private or government, are going to transport sensitive information on their business laptops, there should be a way to lock down the computer from a remote destination, and subsequently clear it, if necessary. Or make a GPS beacon which can be tracked by satellite a mandatory feature of the business laptops so they can be recovered and the thieves prosecuted. Hmm. How about both? A remote lock down AND tracking capabilities? If your laptop is going to contain the private information of 1 million people, why would you NOT protect it?
vickirsamApr 25th 2009 12:41PM
Let's see . $10/laptop for encryption software vs. untold millions in taxpayer dollars to setup credit monitoring and settle lawsuits. Didn't DHS learm from the military nuclear program loss? Why weren't they HIPPA compliant or PPI compliant.
Government is stupid - lawyers get rich - taxpayers get soaked. Again.
PolitiSalApr 25th 2009 5:54PM
These security breaches do have me worried, especially as health IT is offered to every ill of the health care "system". That said, I heard Dr. Michael Chen, VP/CFO of the Taiwanese National Health Insurance established in 1995, speak recently, and he said that they are continually scrambling data, and there has never been a security breach. So it seems that security is possible if enough effort is put in to it.