Almost a joke now.
How many times have similar stories have posted this year?

No encryption?! WTF people?! A registered copy of WinRAR costs $30. WinRAR and WinZIP can be used without even registering them. KGB is free. This person and everyone involved with the lack of encryption policy and/or enforcement of said policies ought to be fired. The 3400 affected national guard should BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF THEM. This sort of thing has been in the news so many times THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS KIND OF STUPIDITY AND LAZYNESS. My 15yo cousin and my 48yo aunt have encryption solutions, know how to use them, and do use them (one just uses WinRAR 256bit AES, the other uses an "encrypted flashdrive" solution for storage and WinZIP 256bit AES for emailing for tax-audit information). There is no excuse for this kind of complete failure to take simple, easy, basic and necessary steps to protect sensitive information. And no patsy! Any one at any point in the chain of command could have easily taken the initiative to make sure this data was encrypted. This isn't a case of an inept IT guy with bad policy or a user that circumvented policy THEY DIDN'T EVEN TRY. They are all guilty. Slapping 3400 people's data on a thumb drive unencrypted and tossing it in your car is pure apathetic negligence. Not ignorance, not a failing of Bureaucracy. Each individual person involved was entirely capable of making sure the data was encrypted. It's that easy.

At several places where I have worked, we were FORCED to use USB drives to move data between computers, because there was simply no other way.

It's all fine and good for IT depts to secure things, but at the same time they usually neglect their workers actually getting their jobs done.

And at most places, if you don't get your work done and you blame IT, even with documentation, it is you and not IT who gets in trouble.

In my experience, these types of situations usually have a backstory just like the one I posted.

That they're all in Iraq and don't know when they're coming back?

I don't know who is more stupid, the soldier or the officers which ordered her to take the flash drive with all of the data. I find it very hard to believe that it was necessary to take all of these people's records on a thumb drive anywhere when we are proportedly supposed to have the most advanced technology in the world.

Call me stupid but I just don't get it!

send her to gitmo

I was inder the impression that we were going to try putting everything into pig latin to make sure it was secure.

Along with the encryption concerns, how dumb must you be to leave computer equipment in your car?

Nobody else is to blame for that!

This must be, oh, the 10th time I've heard of large-scale (1000 people) personal data being lost/stolen this year. Now think of all the times you *don't* hear about it.

With a bit of luck, this will happen thousands of times, releasing millions of social security numbers into the public domain - then finally people might start to realise that the system is broken; that maybe you should not track people using their social #; that perhaps you can't decide if they get a mortage or a car loan based on some statistical analysis of their spending habits; that maybe tying someone to some imaginary "history" is not a human way to behave.

Sooner or later (hopefully sooner) the "credit history" system will become so corrupted with false data that it'll have to be abandoned, and then we'll go back to having a faint degree of privacy and be judged on our own merits instead of by an actuarial program.

A piece of trivia: when the social security system was established, civil liberties groups were very concerned about the potential to track individuals using the unique ID each person was given. Fortunately, congress gave absolute assurances that the number would *never* be used for anything other than tax purposes. Wouldn't it be terrible if lots of non-tax-related businesses such as the electric company, insurance companies, even the video store, asked for your SSN# and so your behaviour and spending habits could all be tracked?

She need to be court marshal. This is the only ways to ensure other service members will not make the same mistake in the future.

This dolt should have taken reasonable precaution to safeguard that flash drive. It's common sense folks!! Don't leave your valuables in plain sight in your car!! Lock it in the trunk!!

Sheesh

Darkk

OK, it was a lapse in judgment (to leave the stuff in the car). How many of you have ever had things stolen? Could you have done more to prevent it from being stolen? Yes = Hypocrite

Can't talk about the states but up here in Canada leaving protected material like that unattended in a car is a chargeable offence and will likely result in getting fired or moved to a position where no security clearence is needed.

Speaking as someone who works in the tech industry.....

The responsibility lies not with the end user to secure data, but with their employer. While it may have been poor form to have that data on a small, portable device, it is in the poorest form of that gov't agency/dept to not have a solution in place to address the portability of data to restrict copying of data to portable devices, or to ensure forced encryption on that data or those types of devices. The tools to do so exist for purchase today.