__/ [ nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] on Thursday 15 June 2006 19:12 \__
> It seems to me that security of servers etc is not the main threat to
> personal data stored on computers, although it doesn't help. The big
> losses reported in the press lately have been from stolen computers,
> taken home by employees or carelessly treated. This is what happened
> in the recent big loss from the US Veterans Administration (some tens
> of millions of social security numbers etc). As near as I can tell,
> the only reason this has not resulted in more damage is that the
> thieves didn't know what they had. It seems to me that the real
> problem is that no one who has this data, be they government, the
> health care industry, credit rating agencies, universities, etc, has
> any real incentive to treat this data with extreme care. Instead,
> management that looks only at the bottom line hires mediocre IT people
> who are stupid and careless. I don't see any cure for this, but I
> resent the fact that I have to give my social security number nowadays
> in order to see a doctor. Eventually social security numbers will
> lose their value for personal identification, and something else
> (fingerprints?) will have to be used, but a lot of people may get hurt
> (by identity theft) in the meantime.
I am very well aware of that case of data theft, which involved breaking and
entering. I was trying to figure out, at the time, whether a faulty server
or negligence was to blame.
Frankly, I tend to have copies of E-mails that I send while at work, but
these are not confidential. Why would /anyone/ copy sensitive information
and grab for permanent storage at home is beyond me. Maybe this could be
attributed to lack of flexible when it comes to remote connections (scp,
ssh, vpn, sftp and so forth). Maybe it is lack of trust in progressive
backups, which encourages distributing the data across more places, even in
adversity to guidelines.
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz The Holy Bible: http://www.gtk.org/documentation.html
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