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Auditors Report FBI Fails in Tracking Lost Laptops
An anonymous reader writes "The Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General is reporting that the FBI has lackluster performance when it comes to tracking data lost on missing laptops. In a recent 44-month audit (ending in Sept. 2005), the FBI reported 160 lost or stolen machines. Of those, ten were confirmed to have sensitive info. A startling 51 of these machines had unknown information — in other words the FBI never knew what they lost. Some of these machines likely contained some of the most sensitive security information the FBI has, as there were several in the bunch that belonged to members of the Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Divisions. But the FBI was never able to properly respond to these losses because someone didn't fill out the right paperwork. The OIG has a copy of the audit (pdf) for public consumption."
or is there an emerging criminal organization that targets laptops for the data they contain instead of for the hardware itself. It could be much more profitable to hold the data hostage rather than flip the laptop for whatever crappy amount you could get on ebay or at the local pawn shop.
Have there been any intensive studies that attempt to show what happens to stolen laptops?
Monstar L
Alright I can see how this could be a problem. But why is no one asking who the hell keeps losing their laptops or having their laptops stolen. I can see it happening, but those numbers seem kind of excessive, especially 10 with senstive data. For some reason I would't be surpised if they are being sold to some source. Because, I've never lost a laptop, nor has anyone I've ever known. I've broken them sure...but cmon.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
"So what we suggest is having an encryption solution (and) having a tracking and recovery solution so that if you do get into trouble you can do something after the fact." - CEO of some company that will *gladly* sell you this.
That's why They've begun to issue a remote access product called the MobiKEY. It is a USB token with a smart card that creates an SSL tunnel with 2 factor authentication (some sort of PKI based scheme) to your work computer. The company that makes this has a managed service called MobiNET that helps to broker the connection so that even Joe Sixpack can connect anywhere there is a net connection. The beauty of this is that all the corporate data stays behind the co there's no data to lose. If you do lose the token, the human that has it has four attempts to guess the password before the SIM fries itself. So assuming your password isn't "password" or something stupid like that, it's secure.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Too bad Rumsfeld's not in a position to announce this to the public. I can hear the press conference now: "There are the ones we know we lost, then there are the ones we don't know we lost, then are are the ones we know are not lost....."
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Did they check that closet in the cellar where J. Edgar Hoover kept his frocks ?
Unlike most, I at least skimmed through the IG report. Only a handful of those laptops were confirmed as stolen, the rest are simply lost. In my experience, lost usually means: another agency or department has it and the agency that originally procured it lost track of it; it was an ancient laptop and its in the bottom of a closet somewhere; or it was scrubbed and disposed of without the proper paperwork being done. Thefts do happen, but it's just a likely that the employee took it home and his kid is playing pac-man on it.
Playboy.com : Girls of the FBI
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
is that many people want the government to have even more control over our lives, mainly health care and retirement. Look, this is the FBI, if they cannot keep track of sensitive data how in hell can we trust another government organization to do better?
The problem with government entities is that Congress never writes laws that punish them. Corporations sure, if a corporation lost "sensitve customer data" you can be sure of howls in Congress and a rash of new laws punishing "evil" corporations. When its the government they turn their heads.
Accountability is the one thing the government has always lacked and the one thing they seem to want from everyone else, you, me, and any other non-government entity.
They should be held to higher standards than ANY corporation, school, or private organization. We entrust them with our lives, shouldn't they be required to prove they can handle that trust?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Come on. This is 2007. A government agency with classified data does not mandate encryption for their portables? It's been a built in feature for user accounts on OS X for more than three years now. It's been built in on OS X for an encrypted disk image for more than 7 years now. It's been available on Linux for longer yet and there have been third party tools for Windows to do this as long as I can remember.
How does this compare to other agencies and companies? 160 over an almost four year period sounds like a lot, but the FBI has over 21k laptops according to the story. That's about 0.76%, or about 0.19% per year. Is this higher than what most companies lose?
The data on the laptops is more worrying. But I wonder when they use the term "sensitive" exactly what that means? Does having the name of the agent on the laptop mean it's sensitive? It'd be different if they spelled out whether the information was classified and to what level.
-dave
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
when you have lots of contractors and sub contractors thing's are easy to get missed placed or used with out filling out the need forums.
Like that one contractor that used a FIB agent login to get about the long time it was taking him to get the ok do to simile stuff like add a printer for the new systems that he was setting up. That was all ready running late and over budget.
So I take it the FBI doesn't use any tracking software on their laptops. Quite a few colleges disperse laptops to students with tracking software embedded so why hasn't the FBI done that? Money isn't an issue for them.
The point is you would think an agency charged with highly sensitive information relating to national security would have their shit locked down airtight.
I've worked for some major corporations dealing with financial information that would've castrated people one by one until this was no longer a problem. I find it very hard to believe the FBI is this relaxed about the problem.
You're nothing; like me.
tracking lost laptops, cause if they were tracking them they wouldnt be lost!
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Oh, a PDF! I want to print it out and CONSUME it......
If they cant find a laptop in their own building how can they find a crook...
oh wait, the laptops cant vote...
-- I am the NRA, enough said...
...to decline to speak to them. Not only has the FBI looked the other way when informants murdered people, they can't even (apparently) keep confidential the identity of informants. If I knew of a crime occuring and feared for my safety in reporting it, the FBI would be the last organization I'd approach.
Maybe they should order some old Dell laptops and short cirtuit the battery after too many bad logins to the hard drive encryption.
Oh, and they are considering using encryption to protect their data? Can someone please send these guys a clue-stick?
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
There are plenty of tracking solutions out there (Trackion http://www.trackion.com/ came up on a search for 'stolen laptop tracking'), why don't they use them or create their own in house?
Good thing we hired contractors to do all the IT stuff, we can just blame them for all the fuckups around here.
Here is Page 4 of the report: "We recognize that in an organization the size of the FBI, some weapons and laptops will inevitably be stolen or go missing."
What's scarier than that, is that the FBI was founded not to report these incidents correctly, or at all, and also failed to investigate reported losses in a timely manner.
You'd think that in today's world, government agencies would take things like this more seriously. Despite the small percentage, the amount of weapons and possible sensitive data with an unknown status is alarming. Sure, they could be sitting lost to the world somewhere, but they could also be in the hands of someone who can do endanger the safety of the public. It shouldn't be this way. We shouldn't have to guess, or assume.
Of course, one is too many, if it has the wrong/right data on it. But this left me with a lot more questions than answers.
.76% (160) in 44 months is .21% per year. Is an annual disappearance rate of 2/1000 laptops high? What's the benchmark for the private sector, and how much lower should the tolerance be for the FBI or similar organizations? I gave up after following numerous Google and Ask links; all I found were USAToday-type figures, which didn't give rates and often didn't seem credible. (One link cited an "FBI statistic" that one in 8 laptops will be stolen ... I wondered if they were just trying to make themselves look good!)
... uh, I mean ... there were these three big guys ...") than "I lost my laptop". The audit points out the the reporting of losses and thefts didn't seem to follow required procedures, including 38 that were reported more than 10 days after loss. There's a lot of ass-covering that can go on in 10 days, I suspect.
TFA mentions that the FBI has "more than 21,000 laptops at any given time". The loss or theft of
How much should we care about the distinction between lost and stolen? I note that the loss rate has gone down while the theft rate has gone up, although about three fourths of the disappearances are classified as losses. I'll bet it's more socially acceptable in the FBI (as elsewhere) to say "my laptop was stolen" ("it broke
Also, the audit says the FBI had a total of 26,166 laptops. Assuming this does not contradict "21,000 at any one time", that seems to mean that the FBI turns over about a quarter of its laptops in three and a half years. (Rough math seems appropriate because "more than" isn't very precise.) That actually seems like a slow replacement cycle, compared with large corporate environments, but the replacement rate isn't particularly relevant here. What might be relevant is an audit of what happens to an FBI laptop when it is taken out of service. If these aren't securely managed, then we have a bigger security threat, by far, from replacement of laptops than we do from lost or stolen ones. Five thousand routine disposals vs. 160 "non-routine disposals". (I'm kind of surprised some bureaucrat didn't categorize them that way.) If the procedures aren't tight, I'd be a lot more worried about those.
As an aside, I'm shocked -- shocked! -- to see that TFA has several plugs for commercial "solutions" to the problem.
Sounds like the FBI needs to invest in tracking software such as Computrace: http://www.absolute.com/
We use this software at my job and have used it to successfully track and recover stolen laptops several times already. Many laptops from manufacturers such as Lenovo, Dell, Gateway and several others actually can store the tracking agent within the BIOS itself so that it cannot be removed (unless you change out the motherboard). If a new hard drive is installed into the laptop, the agent will reinstall itself onto the hard drive from the BIOS. It also has the ability to wipe the hard drive clean remotely if the laptop is found to be stolen.
"0101100101? It's just jibberish. *looks in mirror, gasps* 1010011010@!? AHHHHHH!!"
In my experience, lost usually means: another agency or department has it and the agency that originally procured it lost track of it; it was an ancient laptop and its in the bottom of a closet somewhere; or it was scrubbed and disposed of without the proper paperwork being done.
All these things are true. However, if the system for tracking laptops is broken, it should be fixed or thrown away (i.e. if we're gathering bad data and no-one cares, there's no point in gathering data).
For example, if inter-agency loans are possible, there should be an easy system for legitimising them. If obsolete laptops are in closets, there should be a simple laptop return system (perhaps with incentives involving the obsolete laptop's replacement) so the laptops can be reused or securely disposed of. If the laptop has been securely disposed of without the paperwork being done, the paperwork should be simplified. And so on.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I've decided to comment instead of mod since I feel sure you'll get to 5 without me. This:
is the most insightful thing anyone is going to post on this topic. I'm in the middle of assisting with inventory issues in a major TLA. "Missing" laptops (Katrina/flood losses aside) are always explainable in these ways. Last week, a laptop that had been "lost" for over 5 years was found in a cabinet during an office move. Years ago, that laptop went on a public report as "lost." Our inventory tech had to fall on his sword and file paperwork removing it from active inventory because we couldn't find it. It wasn't taken home by anyone, stolen, or improperly passed on to another agency. It was simply misplaced.
Add to this the pallets of used equipment that get diskwiped and then donated to schools, a process often involving running around, looking for every unissued piece of obsolete equipment we can find and quickly doing whatever is necessary to get it onto the pallet, and you have a situation where laptops become "lost" in too-big numbers but without any real threat to anybodys security.
I would only be concerned, really, about two classes of losses. First is the handful (less than 10) that were stolen apparently due to negligence. However, in most of those cases, the data was routinely encrypted and, again, there's no security threat. Second are the 4 laptops that went home with employees when they retired. That's just inexcuseable.
Overall, 150 or so lost laptops in an organization that size is pretty damn good performance.
This is the FBI we're talking about, not the CIA or the NSA. They're cops, not spies.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I say "No more guns for you until you can secure this sensitive data."
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
If they were successful at tracking lost laptops would the laptops still be lost?
No, this is a REAL problem when unknown data has fallen into unknown hands. While the "it's just the government at work excuse" has worked in the past for Reaganites and assorted neocons, it just doesn't suffice where life and death are concerned. Accountability should not be a thing of the past. An investigative piece by US News and World Report, back in 2002 or 2003, on the US Secret Service also shed light on some very troubling events and circumstances with that organization. Try not to forget Ruby Ridge, Robert Hanssen, and various other turncoats at the FBI. Who knows the sensitive data about an ordinary and innocent citizen, removed from their e-mail or telephone calls being monitored by the feebs, might fall into the hands of identity thieves.
And keep in mind the official wiretap report - the number of wiretaps officially filed by the feds is miniscule, but the number of eavesdropping electronic bugs they purchase daily is in the astronomical numbers.....the numbers simply don't correspond.....
Why should such data be on a laptop ???? or on a usb STICK ????? duhhhhh Get it al secured let them work trough an encrypted citryx metaframe connection to a central cluster of applications.. Laptops becomes toys and nightmares if you put sensiteve data on it. Duhh do i need to tell such things ? No i shouldnt but sadly i do because ik keep fun in simple reminders to high end security IT personal.. Every dumbo could have thought about this.. ahh what a looooooooooooooooooosers Ehm and if you had windows you did put encrypted ntfs on that USB or didnt you??? Or as an administrater you better had that policy to disable usb sticks.
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change.
I agree. No more sensitive data either!
You're nothing; like me.
The Federal Bureau of Laptop Keeping Track Of. With a multimillion dollar budget
Come on now - these guys use the invention of the wonder woman comic artist in law enforcement to read people's minds by measuring skin resistance. Why do you expect professionalism in every aspect of their operation when they are an international laughing stock in another aspect?
I have a community association pool/tennis court key. I had to make a $100 deposit to get that key. You better damn well believe I'll NEVER lose that key. A $1000 deposit on a laptop doesn't sound unreasonable to me.