The Stolen Laptop Syndrome

It seems lately that I can’t go more than a few days without hearing about another case of a laptop being stolen that contains personal data for thousands of people. One getting a lot of attention right now involves data on thousands of active Navy and National Guard members on a laptop stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee. A recent theft in the Twin Cities had an official declaring that a new policy would take effect requiring all computers to be secured by cable locks when in the office.

I’m sure somebody else has brought this up, but it seems to me the problem here isn’t that the computers aren’t super-glued to the desks. The real problem is…Why has somebody decided to even have this data on their laptop? What reason does a Veterans Affairs employee have that they need the personal records of 50,000 people on their laptop? The easy solution to this problem is to quit letting people put this type of information on laptop computers. I can’t imagine why somebody would need the social security numbers of that many people while not at work. This is the type of data, to me anyway, that needs to be on a secure server somewhere and accessed as needed.

Securing laptops to desks with cables while at work doesn’t even begin to address the problem when many of these laptop thefts occur outside of the office. It seems the easiest way to put an end to this is implementing better policies of what data employees can transfer to their laptops.