Stop, Thief!
Ah, Skipper you are so right about you and me paying for this. ‘Cuz of the VA laptop stupidity (shortly after the Bank of America losing the files on the army gov. cards) my hubby has a fraud alert and a victim statement on his credit report and now it is hurting us with the school loans. What crapola - we’re the victims and well, wait a minute not being able to get screwed by some credit/loan deal - oh, forget it we aren’t paying for it. Never mind, my bad.
I would bet that the vast majority of those “lost” laptops were snagged by the people who use them, similar to the regular office employee who brings home pens and pencils. Interesting too if we could have a party affiliation breakdown of all those who’ve reported theirs missing.
DrewSolution Time, once again:
Ok government workers, you lose it you pay for it. Full retail value, and we hit you up for $5000 for the lost data. If necessary we siphon $10,000 off of your pension ... cuz you know Uncle Sugar’s babies aren’t using any $299 cheapo system.
Each machine has a permanent theft chip epoxied to the inside. All machines have barcode IDs carved in the back. Sensor goes off going in and out the door… just like at the mall. So its time to show us your machine mate. Going home with an extra? Carrying one that ain’t yours? Better have a note signed by senior management, or else: Do not pass go, go directly to jail.
Another fix provided to cure the culture of corruption. It still ain’t rocket science!!
Drew I agree it isn’t hard to tag ‘em some way - the damn stores do it. And yes I would like to see the breakdown as far as party affiliation and/or the person’s degree of bds. Bet most, if not all are anti-current administration. Either doing it to make the administration look bad, to get info (you know, leaks) out and finally a small percentage just might be real thieves.
Real easy solution - immediate dismissal and denial of all pay/pensions. It would make most people think twice about taking the ole’ laptop home. And by the time the case hits courts, well I think all the blather will be forgotten and the simple criminal element won’t give them a leg to stand on - besides this is one area where the next time it can be me and it leaves a person (usually unknowingly) vulunerable to some serious financial damage.
As you said, it ain’t rocket science. I guess it will take a Dem to get his info stolen before Congress starts screeding about legislation. Anyone want to try and get an aclu laptop?
Most users are getting laptops nowadays even though they don’t really need one. The confidential secure data shouldn’t be on a laptop or any removable media in the first place!
Don’t forget about USB Thumbdrives 128M -> 4GB or DVD-R 4GB -> 8.5GB’s of storage. I even saw an 1GB SD memory card the size of a thumbnail that flipped open and provided a very thin/small USB port. This could be inserted into a camera, cell phone, or PDA. We’re talking about something as easily concealed as a piece of Microfilm with infinitely more storage ability!
Believe me, I just finished encrypting thousands of laptop hard disks so if they do get stolen the data will be safe from prying eyes. There’s a lot more to this then just lost laptops, it could be almost any modern electronic media.
It’s a rather large problem affecting thousands of corporations and government agencies. One needs to work with data to accomplish their job but it’s way too easy for that data to become unsecured in todays mobile world.
Microsoft really needs to fix this in Vista ASAP! The users need an easy way to encrypt their data but still be able to use the data. The current NTFS file encryption feature is not good enough. This explains why my company bought a site license for a third party disk encryption package at a considerable expense. (something they didn’t consider until after a laptop went missing).
Apple’s OS X has had a feature called File Vault for quite some time, it encrypts your entire home directory w/AES-128 bit encryption (home directory same as C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\). If the laptop is stolen, the data is unreadable without the password. One can also make an encrypted disk image file that can grow as necessary. The encrypted file can be moved to any media and back again. When you double-click it, you type the password and it opens for read/write. It’s simply and extremely secure, especially if the password is properly chosen (you can force the users to pick highly secure passwords - Uppercase, Lowercase, Numbers, & Symbols and at least 8 - 10 characters long.
Unfortunately, there is no real 100% computer security, just like the real world. But least you can take steps to make it more secure. Just checkout El Al airline security, the best in the world.
Posted by MJS
09/22/2006 at 05:37 PM
Sometimes the role of the Luddite does not look altogether unattractive.
