Data Leaks

Computer Security. Is It so Difficult?

Too many data looses in such a short period of time

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

12th of December 2007, 22:06 GMT

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This is how you should protect your computer

This week's pieces of news absolutely shocked me. I've never heard about so many data losses in such a short period of time ever! No matter they were caused by employees' negligence or by unexpected thefts, the data losses usually affected thousands of people with no fault for the leak. All of them were put at risk after

unauthorized people got their details including names, addresses, phone numbers and even social security numbers.

It all started with HMRC's data loss, when two CDs containing information of about 25 million people were lost somewhere between two departments. Nobody knew for sure what happened and whether the discs went into criminal hands or not. The security companies from all over the world were outraged by the loss, many of them saying the leak could have easily been avoided if HMRC had encrypted the data.

Then, the reports of stolen laptops and leaked data assaulted us from all around. It started with a stolen notebook that contained private information of thousands of users. In addition, an employee took his workstation at home and connected it to the Internet. He didn't knew that some of the Internet consumers were able to access the data stored on the system so, again, thousands of users were in danger because of his negligence.

Today, a new theft affected numerous motorists, as a laptop containing their details was stolen. Although there was no financial details among the unencrypted (please note, unencrypted) information, users' data is once again available on the web, although they have no fault.

So, is it that hard to protect the data? Security companies think it isn't because all they need, and now I'm talking about the officials/employers/departments, is an encryption technology that would be able to protect all the files stored on a computer. Simple as that! So, where's the problem?

TAGS:

data loss | security | protection

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