GE says laptop with data on 50,000 staffers stolen
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General Electric Co. said on Tuesday   that a company laptop containing the names and Social Security   numbers of 50,000 current and former employees was stolen in   early September.
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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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More than 94 million accounts were affected in the theft of personal data from TJX Cos. , a banking group alleged in court filings, more than twice as many accounts as the Framingham retailer has said were affected in what was already the largest data breach in history.
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A laptop stolen from a GP surgery had personal details of almost 1,000 diabetes patients, it emerges.
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A laptop computer loaded with personal information on 2,400 residents of the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base has been lost, authorities said Friday.
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For Boeing, laptop thefts are beginning to become somewhat of an epidemic. For the third time in 13 months, one of the company's notebook computers has gone missing, this one containing the names and social security numbers of about 382,000 workers and retirees.
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About 146,000 people using a U.S.  government jobs Web site had their personal information stolen  by hackers who broke into computers at Monster Worldwide Inc, a  government spokesman said on Thursday.
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The government has recovered the stolen laptop computer and hard drive containing sensitive data for up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday.
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A state government intern in Ohio last week lost a backup device that contained personal data on more than 64,000 state workers and tens of thousands of other people.
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Computer hackers captured the names, Social Security numbers and other information of more than 30,000 students and staff at George Mason University earlier this month, school officials said Monday.
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The FBI said that 160 laptop computers were lost or stolen in less than four years, including at least 10 that contained sensitive or classified information -- one of which held "personal identifying information on FBI personnel," according to a report released yesterday.
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Two teenagers were arrested Saturday in the theft of a laptop and hard drive containing sensitive data on up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, authorities said.
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Weeks after the government admitted that it had lost computer discs containing the names and bank account details of 25 million people, exposing nearly half the population to possible fraud and identity theft, the U.K. said a contractor has lost personal data on 3 million learner drivers.
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The FBI has lost 160 laptops in 44 months, according to the inspector general for the  Department of Justice, which criticized the agency for losing the computers -- and for not knowing what secrets may have been kept on all of them.
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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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Federal authorities think that nearly $50 million was stolen in an embezzlement scheme run out of the D.C. tax office, more than double the amount they had previously uncovered, four sources close to the investigation said.
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Here we go again. The Department of Veterans Affairs has disclosed that information on more than half a million individuals and about 1.3 million non-VA physicians -- both living and deceased -- is missing and may have been stolen. The information had been stored on a portable hard drive that was...