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TSA Loses Hard Drive With Personnel Info
WrongSizeGlass writes "A portable hard drive containing personnel data for former and current employees, went missing from a controlled area at the TSA.
From the article: 'The Transportation Security Administration has lost a computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data and payroll information for about 100,000 employees.'"
There is no problems if the disc was encrypted ...
... have a digital identification, and most everyone does, you have to be alert to possible wrongful use of it by others.
Considering all the past digital leaks, I got wonder who hasn't had information on them digitally leaked?
Maybe using Social Security numbers for just about everything isn't such a good idea.
From the BBC article:
Salary details, addresses, dates of birth, national insurance and phone numbers were on the machine which was stolen from a printing firm.
It is now too easy for huge quantities of private data to be carried around on laptops and memory sticks, often by people who do not understand the consequnces of failing to protect that data. Companies need to be held to account when data is lost.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
Even if you have decent physical security, some items will attract thieves. Anything shiny and portable is likely to walk out the door. A portable disk drive is a good example of a thief magnet.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Using Social Security Numbers for everything isn't such a bad idea. It is a convenient way to identify someone, since it is guaranteed to be unique. The problem comes when the SSN is the only piece of information you need to take control over someone's life. There should be some more basic checks put in place to ensure the person is who they claim to be. An example could be mailing the person at their last known address and asking them to send a letter back with an authorised signature on a document that explains what is about to happen. When these basic checks are missing, it is no wonder it is so easy to steal another person's identity.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
There's your problem. I can see the allure of using a portable drive, in that you can easily move the data around from computer to computer, but really, we have a better way to move the data: The bloody network! That HDD should have been screwed into a locked case mounted in a rack bolted to the floor of a securely locked room.
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear.
This is why I try not to use my Social Security number for identification purposes anymore. I really should try to figure out who has it & what I can do to reduce the use of it.
or not wander around with an HD with sensitive data on it? That's just mental. That data should be housed only in a secure facility with only remote secure access to it.
It's plain stupidity and lazyness that compels people to defy the simplest rules of security.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Any system that could leave hundreds of thousands of private records anywhere but in a centralised and secured database seems pretty bad to me. Luckily anything else is against the law where I'm from.
If that does happen -- and hasn't already -- you will NEVER see a story on it. The reporter that runs that will find every lead, every contact and every story from the gov't sector totally dry up. Press credentials would be revoked and they'd probably get a "random" audit from the IRS, along with the census fill-it-all-out-or-go-to-prison long form. They'd be lucky if they could get a local dog catcher to talk to them.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.