Eat In And Take-Away

It was reported this weekend that a member of the military popped into a MacDonald’s and while there an opportunist took his laptop from under his chair. Bad News. However, the laptop was encrypted and password protected. Good News. The laptop apparently contained no sensitive information. Strange News.

It’s good to hear that government laptops are now being protected appropriately, although if there is no sensitive data, then why does it need to be encrypted - perhaps a little overkill? Maybe, the definition of sensitive is different, or perhaps it might contain sensitive data in the future? When it comes to laptops full disk encryption is the best bet - that way you can be sure the data is reasonably well protected - and if you happened to be in the US then you wouldn’t have to disclose the fact it was lost. Perhaps this was disclosed over here to start re-building confidence in the government’s data handling policy?

April 15, 2008 | Filed Under Reputation, data-loss, security | Leave a Comment