- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
US National Public Radio (NPR) reports today that BP's Gulf oil spill woes - which already include paying out compensation amounting to a whopping $4,000,000,000 - have been worsened by a data spill.
Ironically, the lost data includes personally identifiable information (PII) about some 13,000 oil spill compensation claimants.
NPR reports that names, addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers - a key aspect of personal identity in the USA - were amongst the data lost.
The sobering part of this regrettable incident is that it happened because a single laptop was lost or stolen "during routine business travel". And laptops are easy to lose - back in 2008, we wrote about a survey which found that 12,000 laptops are lost every week at US airports alone.
(Re-read those numbers above. When I first saw them in print, I misread the figure as "12,000 laptops lost per year", which sounded bad enough. It took a while before I realised that the rate was per week - 50 times higher than the number that had already got me worried!)
Back in that 2008 survey, almost three years ago now, 53% of people said that their laptops contained confidential business information, with two thirds having taken no measures to secure their data. Clearly, some companies still aren't taking appropriate measures.
More details - link
Ironically, the lost data includes personally identifiable information (PII) about some 13,000 oil spill compensation claimants.
NPR reports that names, addresses, phone numbers and social security numbers - a key aspect of personal identity in the USA - were amongst the data lost.
The sobering part of this regrettable incident is that it happened because a single laptop was lost or stolen "during routine business travel". And laptops are easy to lose - back in 2008, we wrote about a survey which found that 12,000 laptops are lost every week at US airports alone.
(Re-read those numbers above. When I first saw them in print, I misread the figure as "12,000 laptops lost per year", which sounded bad enough. It took a while before I realised that the rate was per week - 50 times higher than the number that had already got me worried!)
Back in that 2008 survey, almost three years ago now, 53% of people said that their laptops contained confidential business information, with two thirds having taken no measures to secure their data. Clearly, some companies still aren't taking appropriate measures.
More details - link
