Ohio Plans To Encrypt After Data Breach

Lucas123 writes "After a backup tape containing sensitive information on 130,000 Ohio residents, current and former employees, and businesses was stolen from the car of a government intern in June, the state government just announced it has purchased 60,000 licenses of encryption software — McAfee's SafeBoot — for state offices to use to protect data. It's estimated that the missing backup tape will cost Ohio $3 million. In September, the state docked a government official about a week of future vacation time for not ensuring that the data would be protected."

Comments

A week's vacation?

[Jester998]

the state docked a government official about a week of future vacation time for not ensuring that the data would be protected

I work as a DBA in a nonprofit healthcare organization. If our backup guys lost a tape, and I hadn't bothered to check off the box in our database backup software that says "Encrypt: 256-bit AES", I would lose my job.

This guy got dinged a whopping 1 week of vacation time. That's not even '1 week suspended without pay'. It's the equivalent of having to stay in detention after school.

I need to move over to the public sector or something.

They led the horse to water...

[Darth Muffin]

... but can't make it drink. Encryption is only a partial solution. You still need to keep your backup tapes secure (they won't be encrypted by this software, but most higher end backup software will), and you need to keep people from copying files to USB sticks or burning to CD.