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Intern Loses 800,000 Social Security Numbers
destinyland writes "A 22-year-old intern said today he's the 'scapegoat' for the loss of over 800,000 social security numbers - or roughly 7.3% of the people in the entire state of Ohio. From the article: 'The extent of my instructions on what to do after I removed the tapes from the tape drive and took the tapes out of the building was, bring these back tomorrow.' Three months into his $10.50-an-hour internship, he left the tapes in his car overnight — unencrypted — and they were stolen. Interestingly, the intern reports to a $125-an-hour consultant — and was advised not to tell the police that sensitive information had been stolen, which initially resulted in his becoming the prime suspect for the theft. Ohio's Inspector General faults the lack of data encryption — and too many layers of consultants. But their investigation (pdf) revealed that Ohio's Office of Management and Budget had been using the exact same procedure for over eight years."
Really....wouldn't an intern who is 22 years old and possibly an CS major know well enough to not leave data tapes in his car overnight? Seriously, did this kid leave his CD's or other shit in his car as well? Or is this just a glimpse of the future generation of college graduates and their common sense (or lack thereof?) Either way, I'm 24, and I've known for the past 8 years that you can't be stupid and leave stuff like that in your car. I don't know, maybe its the shock that common sense isn't so common. I mean, a company that I used to work for in South Carolina and had no respect for because they wouldn't spend a dime on IT had a great system for dealing with backups. It was two randomly chosen employees in two vehicles taking the tapes to Iron Mountain...I still have yet to see another company with such an effective plan that transports tapes between places without the use of a panzer. /end spewage