05/29/08 11:47 am ET
It seems we may hear about another government laptop theft or misplacement tomorrow. And this time it is a laptop apparently used by a senior-level government official.
The SANS Institute, a nonprofit cybersecurity research organization in Bethesda, MD., cites an article published by PC World on a Gartner study, which found few retailers report security breaches. In the comments section, SANS experts write their take on the significance of the news item. In one comment, SANS Director of Research Alan Paller writes:
A similar situation exists in federal agencies where agencies report thousands of limited compromises and minor data breaches to US-CERT, but conveniently forget to report the really important ones. You'll hear about one important government (very senior official's) laptop loss on Friday.
Stay tuned.
COMMENTS
Because all Executive Branch laptops are encrypted, this will be a story about a $2,500 equipment loss.
Seriously, though, the issue should be what data were at risk on a lost laptop, along with some notion of how great was the risk of compromise. Government cellphones and crackberries are lost with regularity, but fail to stir journalistic angst because such losses seem unlikely to endanger taxpayer (voter) privacy data.
Sigh....
Andy Boots 05/30/08 08:12 am ET