More Old-School Data Theft

Another laptop has been stolen and sensitive information has been exposed. This time, it's At&T that's been affected. But this has become rather common lately, I guess that we've had one of these cases every week.

However, AT&T's situation is a little bit more severe than others' since all the data they had was unencrypted. And to think that I already wrote two articles about mobile users not being secure... But I really wasn't expecting this from AT&T - I mean, they're a huge telephone company and I was thinking that these people are experts in communication and should care a little bit more about securing data. If I knew that my employees were running around carrying all sort of sensitive information on their laptops, I'd try and design a system that detects hackers and stuff like that and when it does, erase the information, so that it will do no good to phishers.

I don't think that the ones that stole the laptop were after the info, but in any case, as I've found out from NetworkWorld, the stolen laptop contained information on AT&T's benefits plans (also including personal data of current and former employees) and was password protected. This password protection thing is not such a big deal, if you ask me. All you have to do is remove the battery from the motherboard and just leave the computer like that for a few minutes and voila, the machine no longer remembers any passwords!

Mobile security is still something many people don't take into consideration. To be honest, I think that "off the network" security is not considered an issue by many IT managers, even tough it is. So, what can AT&T do now? Well, nothing much, they noticed their employees and now they're just hoping for the best.