VIRGINIA GOVERNMENT AGENCY ORDERS EMPLOYEES TO STOP BRINGING COMPUTERS HOME CONTAINING SENSITIVE DATA http://www.dailyprogress.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=CDP%2FMGArticle%2FCDP_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149188654612&path=!news!opinion

Yes!

A prominent agency has ordered employees to stop taking home laptop computers containing sensitive information.

That agency is the Virginia Department of Veterans Services. Three cheers for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

The action is pre-emptive. No data has been stolen from the department, officials say - and they want to make sure it stays that way.

As ’most everyone knows by now, a rash of recently exposed data thefts has left many Americans further vulnerable to having their identities stolen.

The most egregious was the theft of a computer from the Veterans Administration containing the names, Social Security numbers and other identifying details affecting, at best estimate, some 26.5 million U.S. veterans. The laptop was stolen from the home of a contract worker.

More recently, Social Security numbers and other personal data on 13,000 District of Columbia employees and retirees was stolen when a computer was taken from the home of a contract employee.

Other scenarios involve everything from a government computer containing personal information lost as baggage on an airline flight, all the way up to outright hacking.

In fact, the latest report of data loss involves hacking - and this time, a government agency was not the victim. Visa USA this week reluctantly confirmed a security breakdown with use of its cards at ATM machines.

The problem is months old. That Visa is just now publicly acknowledging it is an unfortunate pattern noted in several of the other incidents: a delay in owning up to the truth, which means a delay in the public being able to protect itself.

Visa had notified member banks, and North Carolina-based Wachovia had begun replacing its customers’ Visa cards as a security precaution. The mass replacement of cards led the media to begin asking questions. The trail of answers eventually led to Visa USA.

Even Equifax, the credit-check company, admits to a laptop being stolen from one of its workers aboard a London train. The company says the personal data it contained would be impossible to access, however.

“Experts say that an average of three percent of all Americans are victims of identity fraud each year,” says Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who is cosponsoring a bill to provide financial protection to veterans and active-duty military personnel who might be hurt by the theft of VA data.

He noted that even if no information is lifted from that computer, “an average of 795,000 veterans will become victims of identity fraud this year. … If the data stolen along with the laptop is used by crooks, the number of veterans and active duty personnel hurt by such a loss could be much higher.”

One of the hardest things to understand about some of these recent hardware thefts is why on earth agencies would allow computers containing sensitive data to leave their buildings in the first place.

Offices are not immune to theft, of course, but once computers leave that protected environment they become significantly more vulnerable.

Veterans Services didn’t wait for such a theft. On May 31, it ordered employees to leave computers at their offices.
The deparment also plans to install a more secure computer system by autumn.

Those are two smart moves - and conscientious ones.

Virginia’s veterans deserve this kind of care for their financial safety