Data Breach at Georgetown University

In what constitutes an inexcusable breach of trust and security, GU reported to its students and faculty that nearly 38,000 people have had their personal data exposed.
http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=31245

Apparently a sensitive hard disk was stolen - with the disk containing UNENCRYPTED information (SS numbers, names etc) of many thousands of students and faculty. I cannot imagine how such a prestigious institution could let such a thing happen.

Does security begin and stop with/at the ethernet cable?!!

Physical security is as important as network/digital security. For anyone to minimize the value or importance of one over the other is beyond ludicrous. GU is offering to pay for one year's worth of credit monitoring, but what about after that? The govt should mandate a MINIMUM of 5 years' worth of credit monitoring for each such incident, plus total insurance covering at least 5 times the total of the existing credit limit of all of the current credit cards owned by the affected people.

Further to that, the govt, which seems to have absolutely no take on such issues, needs to get off its lazy behind and do something meaningful, like legislating strong penalties for careless and negligent organizations.

I've repeated such thoughts ad nauseam and probably will continue to do so until such events become a thing of the past. At the rate things are going vis-a-vis data theft, it's going to be a VERY long time before we can stop worrying about such horrible incidents of violation of our trust and safety.

Be safe!

Why Deja Vu May Not be a Good Thing

...in the case of Britain's worst security breach ever -- the loss of 2 CDs containing details of nearly every child in the UK and the bank details of every family.

Somehow it seems astoundingly asinine that a junior-level official would be first permitted charge of this information and then scapegoated when something went wrong. Well, not much of a new thing there, but the really sad part is that a report had warned the govt of improper protocols and the implications of not following proper rules just a few months ago.

You can read about the shamefulness of it here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/25/ncustoms425.xml

Why am I not surprised that most of the core recommendations are completely based on common sense, and that they are not that difficult to follow? I myself have repeated myself a few times on this blog concerning the same security steps to be taken to protect sensitive information.

How does one combat such breaches? How does one prevent occurrences of such mishaps? Unless those that are involved learn a very harsh lesson it's going to be difficult to expect much by the way of data protection. The other thing is for the masses to wake up to what is essentially the pillaging of the bits and bytes that constitute their lives, and do something about it. Quickly. Very quickly.

You can refer to my previous posts for my thoughts on this disturbingly frequent issue.

Be safe!

Two Articles to Read on Data Breach

http://www.wane.com/Global/story.asp?S=7370654&nav=menu32_2_11

and then

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gqGfy6HNMsTyAGUesRe43dQCGsDgD8SV20PO2

And you'll get an idea of how much money is at stake for institutions and companies that deal in (and store) personal data, especially sensitive data.

Be safe!

Worm in the Apple

That a 'progressive' techie company with an admittedly geeky CEO will not protect its customers' best interests and privacy is indeed lamentable. Apple will not accept cash or even its own gift cards for the purchase of an iPhone.I know there are companies that will restrict the number of items sold to an individual buyer - that's fine, you want everyone to get a chance to buy the product - but explicitly forbidding cash and gift card transactions for a particular product is not only very unusual but very shortsighted as well.Let's hope they change their minds and do their part in protecting privacy (each cash-paying customer = one less credit card record to worry about!)
Be safe (and pay cash for the Zune!)
Just kidding, of course :-)