Saturday, February 3rd, 2007...6:31 pm...by:
VA Hard Drive Missing
When I first read this, I thought is was old news. However, upon further examination, it is a NEW report.
Department of Veterans Affairs is reporting that a portable hard drive may have been taken from a VA medical clinic in Birmingham, AL. The hard drive in question was used to back up information on an office computer and may have contained the personal information of 48,000 veterans. Almost half of those records were unencrypted.
Everything is still being investigated, so nothing is certain yet. However, one would think the Department of Veterans Affairs would have learned their lesson and made it virtually impossible to lose private data again. Remember, the VA lost personal information for 26 million veterans last year - 6 months ago!
Hardware will be stolen; unfortunately that is going to happen. But why weren’t the records on that portable hard drive encrypted? I have no idea. Maybe it was too much trouble.
2 Comments
February 3rd, 2007 at 8:05 pm
The least they should do is get it encrypted especially with so much confidential information in it.
paddy
February 3rd, 2007 at 8:19 pm
You are exactly right, Paddy. If the hard drive is truly lost, I imagine that the victims will be thinking that same thing.
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