A laptop containing the personal information on 382,000 current and retired workers of Chicago-based Boeing Co. was stolen from an employee's car earlier this month, according to Boeing spokesman Tim Neale. He declined to say exactly where the laptop was stolen. The information included employees' Social Security numbers, home addresses, telephone numbers and birth dates, as well as salary information, Neale said.
Although the laptop was turned off and was password protected, Neale said the data on it was not encrypted. Neale said Boeing is working with law enforcement officials to try and recover the laptop and noted that the company began notifying the affected people on Tuesday. Boeing is strongly suggesting that they sign up for a credit monitoring service, of which the company will pay, he said.
News source: Computer World
Although the laptop was turned off and was password protected, Neale said the data on it was not encrypted. Neale said Boeing is working with law enforcement officials to try and recover the laptop and noted that the company began notifying the affected people on Tuesday. Boeing is strongly suggesting that they sign up for a credit monitoring service, of which the company will pay, he said.
News source: Computer World
Nice to know there are still companies out there that are irresponsible when it comes to their data. Come on, you are going to give somebody a laptop and not even use the crypt program (built in efs?) to encrypt data? What a joke!
-fm
dude, thats just way more than stupidity, that should be punished!
-fm
dude, thats just way more than stupidity, that should be punished!
-fm
Seriously, I agree. There's plenty of easy ways to encrypt files. Hell, XP Pro even has basic file/folder encryption built in. (Yeah, yeah, it's old and can be easy to break; Hey it's still better then nothing).
But it's not all the employee's fault. Why didn't Boeing mandate an encryption scheme for sensitive data on laptops? Or, if they did, why did they do such a lousy job enforcing it? Plenty of blame to spread around here, people.
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