Stolen Flash Drive with Personal Info on 2,600 Delphi Workers

A flash drive containing private information on 2,600 former Dayton-area Delphi workers has recently been stolen from an unattended laptop of a Job and Family Services department employee. The information stored on said drive included names, addresses, social security numbers and telephone numbers of the workers.

Helen Jones-Kelley, director of the Job and Family Services department, quoted by the Dayton Daily News, said leaving the laptop unattended during lunch hour was a violation of department policy and the responsible employee could be taken disciplinary actions against, including termination.

In what those affected are concerned, the same department representative said they have sent letters to all those involved.

Countrywide Employee Arrested For Stealing Customer Private Data

Californian FBI agents have recently arrested a Countrywide Financial Corp. employee suspected to have stolen personal information about the home mortgage lender’s customers. This new negative event puts a whole new pressure on the company who has been severely affected by the current lending crisis and has also been investigated for fraud.

According to a Computerworld article, Rene Rebollo who was a senior financial analyst for Countrywide Home Loan’s subprime mortgage division, accessed customer data through his work computer and saved it onto flash drives that he then took out of the company. According to the FBI, Rebollo admitted three months ago to have given the private information to third parties. Another man accused of having bought the stolen data was also arrested along with Rebollo.

How much money did Rebollo make from selling the data? Not nearly enough to compensate the minimum 5 years he could spend in jail: 50,000 to 70,000 dollars! Countrywide is now analyzing if he has really exposed the identity of customers and if this is the case, all those affected will be notified.

It would be interesting to see a subsequent analysis of how much Countrywide lost in this affair. But it is hard to determine the costs of a bruised image and shattered trust in the company.

Laptop With Anheuser-Busch Employees’ Private Data Stolen

Global beverage company Anheuser-Busch has recently released information on the theft of a laptop containing private records of current and former employees. The theft took place in June at an office from the St. Louis area.

Tim Farrell, the company’s vice president for corporate human resources, quoted by DailyPress.com said Anheuser-Busch sent letters to an undisclosed number of employees and ex-employees letting them know what had happened. As the stolen laptop contained Social Security numbers, home addresses and marital status, the company also offered a year of free credit reporting. According to the same source, the private records stored on the stolen computer was password-protected and encrypted.

Stay Clear of Computer Threats on Vacation and Business Trips

And how exactly can you do that? CoSoSys has just released version 3.0 of Carry it Easy +Plus which focuses on increased security for security for USB flash drive users that access their data on public PCs like in internet cafés or hotel business centers.

Carry it Easy +Plus 3.0 has a whole range of features on display that are great for road warrior or the luckier ones of us who are vacationing: Website Password Manager, PC-Screen Lock128 bit AES data encryption, Outlook e-mail, contact and calendar sync, File & Folder Sync, No Trace Internet Browsing and much more.

So why do you need such tight security? The official release explains it:

When vacationing or travelling for business, the simplest technology-bound actions on your daily routine can expose you to real threats. Accessing your webmail account in an Internet café or on a different public PC you might run across in hotel business lounges or in airports exposes you to having your login credentials stolen by keyloggers or other malicious applications. The same can happen when plugging in your notebook in an unsecured network.

With the new SafeLogin feature in Carry it Easy +Plus as your password manager, all your website login credentials are stored securely in encrypted format on your portable storage device and automatically entered on any PC without the use of a keyboard. This feature does not only make logging in secure but also more convenient.

US Federal Agencies Welcome Data Theft

After 15 months of investigation into 24 major US federal agencies, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has release a report showing that key US Departments still don’t take data security seriously. Given the list of breaches we’ve been covering affecting everyone from colleges and hospitals to the US Army, I’d say it’s high time they started!

According to the report quoted by Vnunet.com, around 70 percent of laptops and handhelds used by agency failed to comply with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rules and didn’t use encryption making the data available to anyone intending to steal it. The OMB rules are not even close to being new, as they decided all federal laptops should be encrypted back in 2007.

“We are recommending that OMB clarify governmentwide encryption policy to address agency efforts to plan for and implement encryption technologies,” said the report.

“We are also making recommendations to selected agencies to properly install and configure FIPS-compliant encryption technologies, to develop policies and procedures to manage encryption, and to provide encryption training to personnel.”

Other practices of extremely low levels of security (or should we say non-existent security) include Nasa employees refusing to deploy encryption software on their laptops and members of the Department of Education who weren’t told encryption software was installed so they of course weren’t using it. From what I know if they’re using Windows, whenever a new program is installed, you have a quite nagging message in your Startup Menu. How patient must one be to simply ignore it over and over again