Lost in Space

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Lost in Space

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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September 2, 2008 at 9:34 pm

#126153

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Lost in Space

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robert.sinclair SSC Journeyman Points: 76 More actions · Answer 1

Data loss is a political hot potato in the UK at the moment. Government agencies have managed to lose personal data in all sorts of imaginative ways. The most recent by a contractor on a memory stick.

I suppose that working in an IT department you are aware of an on going replacement of lost and stolen laptops on a fairly regular basis, and I would think most losses contain information of use to a competitor or criminal.

See

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7575989.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7570611.stm

for details of UK government data mishaps

Shaun McGuile SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4111 More actions · Answer 2

65% of 600,000 at $400 dollars a pop = $156,000,000

Wow! No wonder laptop sales are a lucrative market!

Ok lets start a business - the public pay us $100 dollars per anum each for super glue and a tag with our phone number and an id No on - we log it in a database.

Someone finds the laptop phones our number and we recover the kit!

Easy money! 😀

Hiding under a desk from SSIS Implemenation Work :crazy:

Richard Gardner-291039 Hall of Fame Points: 3603 More actions · Answer 3

Although I'd suspect that some people actively try and lose their laptops in order to get a new one, maybe they don't look for them too hard...

Michael Earl-395764 SSC Guru Points: 53873 More actions · Answer 4

I have a "travel" laptop. It's basically a dumb terminal and I can rdp into machines on my home network and into my workstation at work.

So, I could basically fling the thing out the window and not miss a step.

I may lose a document I was working on locally if I had not uploaded it to Skydrive yet, but I try to keep as little on the actual laptop as possible.

Ian Massi SSCertifiable Points: 5931 More actions · Answer 5

My wife wants a laptop, maybe the next time we're near a major airport, we'll just go up to the counter and say we lost a laptop. Then we can grab one and go home. I might even pick up some unclaimed luggage instead of buying new clothes :hehe:

Shaun McGuile SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4111 More actions · Answer 6

Ian Massi (9/3/2008)
My wife wants a laptop, maybe the next time we're near a major airport, we'll just go up to the counter and say we lost a laptop. Then we can grab one and go home. I might even pick up some unclaimed luggage instead of buying new clothes :hehe:

Not if my company 'Laptops Reunited Inc.' has tagged it you won't! 😀

Hiding under a desk from SSIS Implemenation Work :crazy:

Someguy SSCrazy Points: 2207 More actions · Answer 7

Call me old-fashioned, but I usually put a tag with my name and phone number on all my bags when I travel. One time I left a carry-on bag on the ground in Dallas (I was REALLY tired at the time) and after realizing my memory lapse I wandered the entired terminal looking for it to no avail. It was found and returned via FedEx to me within a few days.

Of course the bigger issue is data safety. It seems like making ANY effort to secure data would be a big improvement over the total lack of protection that seems to satisfy most business travelers. Any level of Encryption is better than nothing. Unless you're in the CIA and there is an agent following you in order to steal your sensitive government data, the likelihood that an average theif would spend time trying to decrypt your data is pretty minimal.

___________________________________________________
“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”

Bryant McClellan SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4337 More actions · Answer 8

I rather like the idea of a dumb terminal, especially from a corporate point of view. At my company, ALL laptops are encrypted and in the event of a loss, we will pay for identity theft insurance for 1 year if any customer information was on the laptop. That is good for the customer but not necessarily good for the corporate bottom line.

Using a virtual structure where nothing is stored locally requires plenty of infrastructure and some up-front costs, but do you want to see your company on the MSN homepage as the latest to let personal information disappear?

I would also venture that if there were personal penalties for corporate employees losing laptops, some of those numbers would come down.

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Buy the ticket, take the ride. -- Hunter S. Thompson

blandry SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4821 More actions · Answer 9

Can these numbers actually be correct? Your editorial states 10,000 lost each week at the 36 largest airports. That means on average 278 laptops per week, or roughly 40 laptops per day lost at the 36 major airports. As someone who travels a great deal through our country's major airports, I find those numbers questionable. Just sounds a bit too high - but, who knows, maybe so.

In 2005 I purchased a bunch of 1 gig secure fingerprint thumbdrives, and we instituted rules where all company data carried off-site must be on a secure thumbdrive. We require both air travellers and day travellers to adhere to this rule.

These little drives have a fingerprint reader built-in, and you can set and reset whose fingerprint unlocks the drive. So far, the plan has worked well - no drives lost, no laptops lost. We feel more secure and since our business is based on Intellectual property and client data I am hopeful that should something get lost or stolen, it would be unusable.

My only fear remains that someone will get lazy, move data onto a laptop's hard drive, and forget to save it back to the thumbdrive and purge it. So ultimately, its down to people not technology - as with any such endevour.

There's no such thing as dumb questions, only poorly thought-out answers...

Ross McMicken SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4394 More actions · Answer 10

My company has pretty strong rules on laptops and data security. All laptops are encrypted, and a group policy prevents removal of the encryption. All laptops require a power on password, and there are occasional inspections. Storing data on a laptop is discouraged. Losing a laptop results in an unpleasant conversation with a senior manager about the circumstances of a loss - and a requirement to fill out some forms and attend a data security class. We lose very few laptops, and the majority are lost via theft.

Jim SSCrazy Eights Points: 8718 More actions · Answer 11

Looking back at my own portable storage of private information, I suspect that many people simply don't even think about it. Then, there is the mentality that it won't happen to me. Both big mistakes. I fell into the latter category since I never let my laptop out of my sight. In a public place, the bag never even left my shoulder. Still not secure enough.

I used to carry a wealth of personal information on my laptop with my previous employer. Nothing financial and still short of what an identity thief needs but someone looking for a simple address list would have hit gold. The question arises - did I need it? Well, yes. My laptop was also my development workstation so I had to have the databases the application ran against on my laptop for testing. I did use the BIOS password protection for my hard disk but as I have learned, that simply is not enough.

Irish Hall of Fame Points: 3958 More actions · Answer 12

I don't find it hard to believe that there are potentially 40 plus laptops lost each day. I'd be curious if the number of smartphones is also around that number since they are smaller and easier to forget.

I like the fingerprint thumb drive idea, but fear that those would be easily misplaced.

Regards, Irish

Keller-795887 Say Hey Kid Points: 699 More actions · Answer 13

BTW: Bonus tornado footage on the podcast is always a plus! :w00t:

Looks like Hanna may pass over us on Saturday, but I'd expect it to just be some heavy rain and wind by then.

notquitexena SSCrazy Points: 2674 More actions · Answer 14

Someguy (9/3/2008)
Call me old-fashioned, but I usually put a tag with my name and phone number on all my bags when I travel. One time I left a carry-on bag on the ground in Dallas (I was REALLY tired at the time) and after realizing my memory lapse I wandered the entired terminal looking for it to no avail. It was found and returned via FedEx to me within a few days.
Of course the bigger issue is data safety. It seems like making ANY effort to secure data would be a big improvement over the total lack of protection that seems to satisfy most business travelers. Any level of Encryption is better than nothing. Unless you're in the CIA and there is an agent following you in order to steal your sensitive government data, the likelihood that an average theif would spend time trying to decrypt your data is pretty minimal.

I totally agree, but I use my business address and phone rather than my home address. It works just as well and you don't reveal your personal data.

I also make sure to use the password encryption capabilities on spreadsheets with confidential or personal data, and the same for Word docs.

As a backup, I use the Yahoo Briefcase storage server for key docs, so even if I lose laptop and memory stick I can still go online and retrieve the docs. (Briefcase online storage came with my home computer set up.) The only downside with Yahoo Briefcase is it limits docs to 5 MB each, so for bigger docs I have to partition them.