Oops- US government has lost 1,137 laptops in the last 5 years

In the wake of all the confidential personal data losses due to disappearing laptops in the hands of government agencies an audit has been conducted to determine how wide-spread the problem is and to determine how best to strengthen procedures to prevent the compromise of confidential personal data.  The report generated by that audit reports a number that I find staggering– out of the 30,000 laptops that are in use by the 15 government agencies audited there have been 1,137 laptops lost or stolen in the last five years!  The report tells us not to worry though, out of all of those lost laptops only 249 of them contained personal data.  Hello, anybody heard of data encryption for confidential data?  Equally bothersome is that over half of the lost laptops were in the hands of the US Census Bureau, an agency that uses temporary workers to collect data.

(via Computer World)

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