Census Bureau Loses Hundreds of Laptops

Billosaur writes "According to CNN, The U.S. Commerce Department has lost 1,137 laptop computers since 2001, most of them assigned to the Census Bureau. According to Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, 'All of the equipment that was lost or stolen contained protections to prevent a breach of personal information.' This comes after the fiasco involving the Veteran's Affairs Department's loss and eventual recovery of a laptop containing 26.5 million veteran and active-duty records." Given the scope of the operation, are these losses to be expected or is this an example of poor government security standards?

Comments

Heh.

[TheSHAD0W]

Don't consider them as "lost resources"; consider them a "job perk"...

Running some quick numbers....

[Malfourmed]

From the article:

More than 30,000 laptops were used within the department's 15 operating units since 2001, the department said, and a total of 1,137 were stolen or missing.

Let's assume that at any given time there were about 20,000 laptops in use at the Commerce Dept in the five years since 2001. (30K laptops were used in that period, but some would have been swapped out during that time.)

1,137 missing over this period is a bit over 200 per year, or about 1% attrition per year.

Given the scope of the operation, are these losses to be expected?

I'd say yes. We're talking mobile pieces of equipment, easily hidden in a suitcase or even in coat these days.

The level of data compromise, as opposed to physical asset loss, is another matter, but then the article doesn't quantify that.