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« Encryption..."Maybe I will, GOSH!!" | Main | OMB Issues Recommendations for Laptop and "Sensitive Agency Information" Security »

Red Cross Laptops Stolen: Finally, Laptops That Used Encryption!

Yesterday the Dallas Morning News reported "Three laptops, one of them containing personal information on thousands of blood donors – including Social Security numbers and medical histories – were stolen from a locked closet in the Farmers Branch office of the American Red Cross in May."   

It is good to read that this data was encrypted.  The report indicates the information could be decrypted with a password, though, so hopefully they had a strong password in effect.  Effective and successful security all comes down to human decisions and actions, as do most information security issues. If the password was a good one, the data was probably safe...assuming it was not an insider with knowledge of the password who took the laptops.

BTW, the laptops were recovered. 

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Posted by Rebecca Herold on July 2, 2006 8:14 PM |

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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.