LadyLuna said:
unless the info wasn't stolen, just erased, and the government decides that they can't be bothered trying to find all these people to get the money back.
Then I hope your loan got lost and you don't have to repay it.
How could they possibly
write to all those affected if they had no such data to use
Governments, companies, and more do not store billions of dollars worth of data on a single, transportable, disc; no-one does. They've got the original db somewhere, and backups - and even backups on physical tape too I'd imagine rather than computer disk
They
transport the data on a disk such as was stolen/lost for whatever reason.
The issue is that they've lost the data, which is highly sensitive data. It
should be encrypted. There
should be whole disk encryption, as well as data encryption too. The data, despite being lost,
should be safe - certainly from Joe Public. However, it is alarming how frequently it appears the most basic of protection to user data is ignored and it appears to happen far too frequently. I.e a quick search in the UK news for it unveils a lovely article on the BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7449927.stm
So the problem is a lot of people's personal data is now out in unknown hands. It the data isn't encrypted then just have to keep watching to see if there are huge fines or something
For example, my company laptop has whole disk encryption - only use it to read my email (which has yet more security layered on top
). So that disc
should have been safe as whomever is responsible
should have had security policies in place. Just didn't see any mention of encryption in the article... and they appear to be woefully ignorant and incompetent in that regard
This is the second incident involving missing personal information that her department has faced in less than a month.
In late December, HRSDC revealed that a USB key containing personal information on about 5,000 Canadians disappeared in November.
Someone's head
should roll... (meaning lose their job, not literally be beheaded
).
