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« Thief Steals Credit Card Information from Dumpster and Buys Computer; Remember the Disposal Rule | Main | In the News...Potential HIPAA Violations? »

Reasons for Throwing Away Evidence...People Say the Darnedest Things!

Here in the Des Moines, Iowa area there has been a scandal going on with three executives of a non-profit agency collectively being paid $1.8 million dollars in the last 18 months.  It was reported today that the day after one of these executives resigned because of the investigation, her secretary was found at the office at 4:30am "throwing away" boxes of papers from the executive's office.   

The secretary said, ""I was unable to sleep well that night and I awoke early," Rieck wrote. "I proceeded to get up and go into work as I knew my cubicle needed to be organized and the boxes of old files reviewed."

Sure!  A restless  sleepless night makes a lot of people get up, get ready, and go into work 4 hours early, doesn't it?

Well...scandals certainly seem to motivate people to clean house, don't they?  Shades of Enron pop into mind.

Even if the secretary did not throw away anything involved with the investigation (remember, innocent until proven guilty), it just goes to show how investigations seem to be great motivators to carefully dispose of potentially sensitive or incriminating papers...and how otherwise, without motivation, sensitive personal information, such as credit card information from a beauty supply store, get tossed out into the closest alley dumpster.

Looks like they need to learn about shredders...perhaps at an interesting site, All about Paper Shredders?  Just something I stumbled across...

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Rebecca Herold's Bio:

Rebecca Herold,CISSP, CIPP, CISM, CISA, FLMI, has been providing information security, privacy and regulatory assistance and services to organizations from a wide range of industries for over 18 years. Rebecca was instrumental in building the information security and privacy program while at Principal Financial Group, which was awarded the CSI Information Security Program of the Year Award in 1998. IT Security ranked Rebecca as one of the top 59 IT security influencers, and Computerworld put Rebecca their list of the 25 top privacy experts and on their list of the 9 best privacy consulting firms. Rebecca has been CPO for two consulting organizations, and has had her own information privacy, security and compliance business since 2004. Rebecca has written chapters for several books, dozens of articles, and has been writing a monthly privacy column for the CSI Alert newsletter since the beginning of 2001, and is working on her 11th book. Some of her other books include The Privacy Papers, Managing an Information Security and Privacy Awareness and Training Program, The Definitive Guide to Security Inside the Perimeter (Realtime Publishers), The Shortcut Guide to Improving IT Service Support through ITIL (Realtime Publishers), and The Practical Guide to HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance. In addition, Rebecca is the leader of The Realtime IT Compliance Community where she posts to her IT Compliance weblog. You can contact Rebecca at: rebecca_herold@realtimepublishers.net.