Comments on: Common employee gadget blamed for record data breach

By: D Oship

D Oship — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:30:46 +0000

Encrypt the entire drive. I must take my memory stick with me which contains budget information and hundreds of customer addresses and other confidential information. While I make sure I have a back up stored on a secured desktop computer in case the stick becomes unreadable, I have also encrypted the portable drive in the event it is stolen or lost and someone tries to access the information. Without the encryption I am forced to password protect dozens of files individually or take the chance that it won’t be lost or stolen. The software (TrueCrypt) was free, easy to install and gives me piece of mind. I’m not 100% sure if it’s foolproof but for the casual finder (as opposed to thief) inserting the device will only bring up a request for a password (my password is over 20 characters). You can choose to keep some files unencrypted separately and they are available for anyone easily. I’ll never have a portable device without this feature again.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:17:37 +0000

I agree with Kelly, as far as I’m concerned companies that have had problems are not punished nearly enough to make them want to change. Look at some of the security problems in the past and the company only gets slapped on the hands and says that they must provide monitoring free of charge for the next two years for the consumers. Big Deal!!!!! What about when we get a criminal thats smart enough to gather lots of data and then lay low for 3 or 4 years and then go out and have a grand old time using the information. Here where I work I do not have any CD-RW drives, no floppy drives and the USB ports are locked down unless you have admin rights. I try to limit as much as possible, but even then there are still ways but at least we are trying.

By: Kelly Kline

Kelly Kline — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:36:52 +0000

It seems to me that someone working with credit and debit info should not be permitted to take this information off site to do work due to the sensitive nature of the information involved. There have been so many instances in the past couple of years with the breaching of personal data and other sensitve information as well as an increase in identity theft it would just make sense to keep this type of information on site to help protect the security of the information. As individuals we have so many things we need to do to protect our personal information and then a company allows this type of practice that makes us vulnerable through no fault of our own.