Incidents

Filmed Laptop Theft Gets 268,000 Users in Danger

Another stolen laptop, another data loss

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

10th of December 2007, 10:41 GMT

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Vantec Universal Notebook CoMBination Cable Lock

Laptop. Theft. Lost data. Thousands of people affected. These are surely the most popular terms this season, as several officials lost their laptops containing private information about numerous persons. What the heck, man? Protect your laptops for God's sake? How hard can it be

to keep an eye on a laptop, especially when you know that it contains details of hundreds, maybe thousands of people? OK, enough with this temper, let's get back to today's news. Just as I've said, another laptop was stolen, this time belonging to Memorial Blood Centers. The officials informed a few days ago that approximately 268,000 persons had been affected, as the laptop contained names and Social Security numbers.

However, the laptop was full with password and security protections, so it might be pretty difficult to break them all, they said. The entire theft was captured by security cameras, so the police is now investigating the problem in order to identify and arrest the suspects. Meanwhile, the Memorial Blood Center struggles to notify all the affected users that their data is in danger and a close financial accounts monitoring is recommended. In addition, a special hotline was created for all the donors who might have questions about the theft occurred on November 28, 2007.

"We apologize for any anxiety this incident may cause for our donors. This appears to have been a random crime. We believe the measures securing access to the donor records protect against their inappropriate use. We also immediately implemented additional measures to further protect against unauthorized access to donor data," said Don Berglund, Chief Executive Officer, of Memorial Blood Centers.

Now, I have just one simple question. Is it that hard to pay $19.99 for a security cable that will keep your laptop away from thieves? I spent only 2 minutes looking for such a cable on Amazon and I found tens of such accessories able to help officials avoid such important data losses... In case you're one of those employees with valuable data stored on the laptop, please contact me, I'll give you the link to buy such a cable... Just avoid losing our data!

TAGS:

laptop | theft | security | data loss

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