A government laptop containing personal information was stolen in North Carolina. The laptop contained personal information of people receiving services from the North Carolina Division of Aging and Adult Services. Here’s the story.
While the data on the laptop was password protected, there is no guarantee that the personal information stored on the computer can’t be accessed. Now, there’s hassle and expense all around:
- North Carolina must contact all of the potentially affected people
- These people are asked to place a fraud alert on their credit report and to regularly monitor their credit report
- Additional people were notified to be alert (presumably, contact information was on this laptop but not social security numbers)
- The end user needs a new laptop and hopes their data is backed up (not just the consumer data but anything they’ve had on the laptop)
As you can see, this is a real problem for many people and, rightfully, there is real concern. In a situation like this, you hope it’s just the hardware that will be used by the laptop thief and not the data on it.
This scenario is one we are solving with NxTop. We realize that laptops will be stolen and that dealing with the follow-up in any situation is a pain. In most cases, it is the data on the stolen laptop that causes problems and not the hardware itself.
The solution we’ve come up with combines use of disk encryption and data leakage protection with the ability to remotely “kill” the PC from NxTop Center with a few mouse clicks. Plus, all of the user’s data, applications, and settings are seamlessly backed up on the central server. Simply register a new PC with NxTop Center—even a completely different laptop from a different vendor—and within minutes the user is restored to their personalized environment. I don’t mean a base Windows image with collection of files from a backup server. This is their desktop environment, right down to the settings and the wallpaper picture of their cat.
For more information, see this post: How Do You Deal With A Stolen Laptop? and this web page: Laptop Management and Mobile User Management
November 18th, 2008 at 12:27 am
Doug – interesting story. Would NxTop help prevent the government employee from having this data on their laptop in the first place? Any file of data will have a signature that can be detected. Even a partial file – perhaps with a subset of the personal information – has a signature that can be analyzed and matched. Are there plans for NxTop to allow companies to register data that should never be on a laptop (like SSNs or credit card numbers) and then alert the IT group of violations?
November 18th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
John–Thanks for the comment. I have talked to a number of IT folks who are investigating this type of data loss prevention solution. We don’t have this feature built into our product today, but it definitely something we could enable. Our architecture was designed with an “ISV Zone,” where we can allow third party technologies to plug into our platform and more effectively perform functions that require agents in Windows today. Our initial focus on things like partnering with antivirus vendors to allow their products to scan from a more secure position outside of Windows. I could see us taking those efforts a step further and partnering with data loss prevention companies to do something similar. Since all of the input/output for the PC flows through our platform, we could probably do some very interesting things.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Starbucks Confirms: Missing Laptop Contains Employee Data…
Another high profile laptop theft is in the news, this time about Starbucks and a missing laptop containing data on nearly 100,000 employees.
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January 19th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Security is sure a problem with the computers . The more we install newer codes the more faster these computer hackers find ways to break these codes.
January 19th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Keeping the data secure is really becoming a major problem and creating a lot of problems for the people.the information on them sure is valuable.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Every technology has it’s flaws . The problem created by such situation is irritating . One must not be totally dependent upon any mechanical subject.
Barbara