To continue right where we left off last year the government reported three more data breaches over the holidays. According to Dark Reading, there was a break-in at the Davidson County Election Office in Tennessee where thieves took two laptops containing the voter information of 337,000 people in the area. Most frightening, the data included the social security number for each voter, and by all indications, none of that data was encrypted.
The second reported breach (makes you wonder if this is like cockroaches, where, for every one you see, there are another hundred you don't see) occurred with the Air Force, where over 10,000 active and retired employees were informed that a laptop containing their SS#, birth dates, addresses, and phone number went missing. The laptop belonged to someone from the Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, DC, and it was taken from his home.
Finally, another stolen laptop containing personal information was reported lost by the Minnesota Department of Commerce.
This -- along with the recent government data lapses that happened in the UK, where 25 million child benefit recipients in Briton had their data exposed when an employee mailed out the entire database on several discs that went missing (and to compound the error, he resent the discs a second time when the first failed to arrive) -- adds fuel to the argument that the best way to lost your personal data is give it to the government.
Makes you glad they haven't made mainframe computers portable...yet.
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