Government Says Stolen VA Laptop Recovered

[Brutuskend]

Government Says Stolen VA Laptop Recovered
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour ago

WASHINGTON - The government has recovered the stolen laptop computer containing sensitive data for up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson announced Thursday.

Nicholson also said there have been no reports of identity theft since the May 3 burglary at the Maryland home of an agency employee.

"There is reason to be optimistic," he told reporters just before the start of another in a series of hearings Congress has had on one of the worst breaches of information security. "It's a very positive note in this very tragic incident," Nicholson said.

Nicholson offered no immediate details on how the laptop was recovered.

Newly discovered documents show that the VA analyst blamed for losing the laptop had received permission to work from home on data from included millions of Social Security numbers. on a laptop from home.

"From the start, the VA has acted as if the theft was a PR problem that had to be managed, not fully confronted," said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif. "They're trying to pin it on this one guy, but I think it's other people we need to be looking at."

 

[BigJ]

So this information has been floating around, garnering national media attention, for almost 2 months and they honestly expect the information not to have been jeopardized?

Hell, copy the HD contents to another drive and chuck the laptop.

 

[jhayx7]

It makes me mad that the government does not keep to its own policies. For example, I work for a health ins company, the government mandated that we encrypt all of our laptops. Six months later all 600+ laptops are encrypted, if one is stolen, the hard drive is useless without the password. Now if the goverment would apply their own policies, incidents like this would not happen.....

 

[cougar78]

As of now, they say that the information hasn't been accessed but it is possible they did a drive copy of the info.

I do hope that the information hasn't been accessed at all. My info is probably in there damn it.

 

[DainBramaged]

Originally posted by: jhayx7
It makes me mad that the government does not keep to its own policies. For example, I work for a health ins company, the government mandated that we encrypt all of our laptops. Six months later all 600+ laptops are encrypted, if one is stolen, the hard drive is useless without the password. Now if the goverment would apply their own policies, incidents like this would not happen.....

...as easily.

 

[dullard]

The CNN article stated that this is probably related to a string of laptop robberies in the area. All other laptops had the HD erased and the laptop sold. All except this one. It seems quite odd that the criminals would give such special treatment to this one particular laptop. Odd that they would give it special treatment and yet didn't bother to copy it or attempt to access the data.

Something just doesn't add up yet. I think there is more information about this case that we haven't been told.

 

[jhayx7]

Originally posted by: DainBramaged

Originally posted by: jhayx7
It makes me mad that the government does not keep to its own policies. For example, I work for a health ins company, the government mandated that we encrypt all of our laptops. Six months later all 600+ laptops are encrypted, if one is stolen, the hard drive is useless without the password. Now if the goverment would apply their own policies, incidents like this would not happen.....

...as easily.

Also....WTF keeps sensitive info like that on their laptop in the first place??????!?!?!?! Keep it on the server, VPN from home and work. End-user training FTW!

 

[teddyv]

The theft of personal data is going to get worse and worse. Congress is eventually going to have to get around to addressing how (frighteningly easily) credit is granted in this Country.