Friday, July 7. 2006
Be prepared
Is apparently the Red Cross motto, too.
In what sounds like a number of other incidents, a laptop computer containing the personal information of thousands of blood donors was stolen from a Texas Red Cross office.
But the Red Cross took the necessary precautions. The data was encrypted. And while I'm sure that sometimes people grumbled about how it was more difficult to handle encrypted data, they are now breathing a sigh of relief that the data is safe.
It's too bad that this is the exceptional story, rather than the norm. My organization has a few hundred mobile computers in the field - and we lose about 6 every year. If one were stolen for industrial espionage instead of a quick fence, we'd never know it. But since all the data on the mobile is encrypted, we don't have to worry about it.
JaBbA says encrypt your data!
In what sounds like a number of other incidents, a laptop computer containing the personal information of thousands of blood donors was stolen from a Texas Red Cross office.
But the Red Cross took the necessary precautions. The data was encrypted. And while I'm sure that sometimes people grumbled about how it was more difficult to handle encrypted data, they are now breathing a sigh of relief that the data is safe.
It's too bad that this is the exceptional story, rather than the norm. My organization has a few hundred mobile computers in the field - and we lose about 6 every year. If one were stolen for industrial espionage instead of a quick fence, we'd never know it. But since all the data on the mobile is encrypted, we don't have to worry about it.
JaBbA says encrypt your data!
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