Lost Computer With Data on Veterans is Recovered
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The government said Thursday it had recovered a Veterans Affairs Department subcontractor's lost desktop computer containing personal data for 16,000 veterans.
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SEPTEMBER 03, 2004  - The disappearance of a laptop hard drive in the California State University (CSU) system has triggered a year-old state law requiring anyone whose personal information might have been stolen to be notified.
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Intruder gained access to database holding personal information for up to 600,000 elderly and disabled Californians.
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Blog: Upgrades based on purchase history allows users to recover previously purchased and lost iTunes files
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(InfoWorld) - Authorities have charged a 21 year-old Unisys Corp. subcontractor with stealing a desktop computer with billing information on as many as 38,000 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical patients. Khalil Abdulla-Raheem, of Washington, D.C., was charged Wednesday with theft of government property. He is the employee of an unnamed company that "provides temporary labor to Unisys," according to a statement released by the Veterans Affairs (VA) department's Office of Inspector General. The computer wasÂ stolen in late July from Unisys's Reston, Virginia, offices. It contained records on about 16,000 living patients who had received treatment at VA medical centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well as information on another 2,000 who are deceased. Data on an additional 20,000 patients may have been stored on the computer, according to the VA. The VA said that these records may have contained Social Security numbers, addresses, and insurance information. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is now analyzing the computer to determine whether this information has been compromised, but investigators do not believe that Abdulla-Raheem was after the VA data. This is the second ofÂ two major data breaches at the VA this year. In May, personal information on about 26.5 million veterans was compromised when a laptop and external hard drive were stolen from a VA analyst's home. Authorities haveÂ arrested two teenagers in connection with that theft and the FBI has concluded that the sensitive information was untouched. Still, the data in question was unencrypted in both of these incidents, and the VA, which has regularly scored failing grades in the Federal Government's annual computer security scorecard, has been blasted for its handling of the matter. The department's Inspector General published a report in July citingÂ policy failures and a lack of supervision in the May incident, and called for the VA to adopt a clear policy for safeguarding sensitive data. With data notification laws pushing data breaches into the public eye, PC encryption has become a priority for many IT departments. In fact, laptop encryption will top a list of the ten most important security trends for 2007, due to be released on October 1 by the SANS Institute, a computer security training organization. "Every major organization is moving forward to buy and deploy encryption products," said SANS Director of Research Alan Paller, in an e-mail note sent Thursday. "The reason is that top management is adamant about not facing personal embarrassment because of lost sensitive data." Abdulla-Raheem was released on bail Wednesday and is due back in federal court for a preliminary hearing on October 3. Unisys has offered a US$50,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the PC. So far, nobody has come forward to claim the money, according to Lisa Meyer, a Unisys spokeswoman. Unisys had not encrypted the data on the stolen PC because this was not required by the VA, but the company is now taking a second look at this policy, Meyer said. "An event like this causes us to reexamine everything we're doing," she said. Â
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A soldier whose stored possessions were sold while he served in Iraq has received their full value of $8,000 and an apology from the storage company.
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Veterans groups say they will keep pressing for improved data security &amp;#151; and free credit monitoring &amp;#151; after the government found the stolen Veterans Affairs laptop computer containing sensitive data on 26.5 million people.
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There are multiple known instances of lost or stolen tapes but, to the best of my knowledge, not one reported instance of anyone recovering and maliciously using data stored on missing tapes. It's just too hard for an average thief to retrieve it.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is investigating a missing hard drive containing the personal records of 48,000 military veterans, the agency said. The external hard drive contained about 20,000 personal records that were not encrypted, according to information from U.S. Representative Spencer Bachus, an Alabama Republican. A VA employee reported the hard drive missing from an agency Birmingham, Alabama, facility on Jan. 22, according to a VA press release. The VA and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating the missing hard drive, the VA said in its Friday press release. The VA's Office of Information and Technology is conducting a separate investigation, Jim Nicholson, VA's secretary, said in a statement. "We intend to get to the bottom of this, and we will take aggressive steps to protect and assist anyone whose information may have been involved," Nicholson added. In May, the VA reported a laptop and hard drive containing the personal records of 26.5 million military veterans and their families had beenÂ stolen from an employee's home. Police laterÂ recovered the hardware, and the VA said computer forensics tests indicated thieves had not accessed the data, but the theft set off criticism from several members of Congress about theÂ VA's cybersecurity practices. The hard drive in Alabama was used to back up information contained on an employeeâs office computer, and may have contained data from research projects the employee was involved in, as well as personal information, the VA said. The VA Office of Inspector General has seized the employeeâs computer and is analyzing its contents, the VA said. The VA is prepared to notify affected people and provide free credit monitoring, the agency said. The VA will continue to aim to be a leader in protecting personal information, Nicholson said in his statement. In August, the VA also reported that a desktop computer containing the personal information of 38,000 veterans was missing from the office of Unisys Corp., the subcontractor assisting at the agency's medical centers in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The lost VA hardware prompted a congressional review of other U.S. government agencies, and agencies reported thousands of laptops missing in the last five years.
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A portable hard drive that may contain the personal information of up to 48,000 veterans may have been stolen, the Department of Veterans Affairs and a lawmaker said Friday.
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A portable hard drive reported missing by the Department of Veterans Affairs may have held data on 1.8 million veterans and physicians -- far more than the 50,000 people the agency initially said might be affected.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs began notifying 1.8 million veterans and doctors Monday that their personal and business information could be on a portable hard drive that has been missing from an Alabama hospital for nearly three weeks.
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By Vanessa Thomas  Imagine a laboratory filled with equipment advanced enough to locate deleted child pornography on a hard drive, recover old e- mails sent on a cell phone and trace the owner of a camera used to download photographs onto a laptop.
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Your work computer just suffered a major meltdown. Maybe the operating system failed, or a virus crashed the hard drive.
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A bargain at $69 From the files of IT bloopers comes this cautionary tale: a California man stumbled upon a stash of confidential data belonging to the Arkansas Democratic Party after its computer consultant accidentally sold a hard drive containing the material on eBay.â¦
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The personal details of up to 600,000  people were lost when a Royal Navy officer's laptop was stolen  in the latest embarrassment to hit British Prime Minister  Gordon Brown.
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Ten years supply of applicants swiped from car Personal details of the 600,000 people who have applied to join the armed forces over the last ten years were stolen with an MoD laptop earlier this month, it was admitted late on Friday. The computer was stolen from the car of a junior naval officer, which was parked outside his house overnight in Edgbaston, Birmingham.â¦