Thoughts from the abyss

I’m not totally sure what it is lately, but apparently all the stars are properly aligned, the moon’s in the proper phase, the sun’s UV rays are cooking people’s brains, but what the hell is it with people losing millions of people’s personal information…

Just the other week, an employee at the VA lost all the veterans information, and I just ran across this link at Digg. Apparently a Texas student loan provider lost 1.3 million borrowers information. I don’t get it. I guess it’s hard to find good help these days. I know one thing, and it’s a matter of common sense, I will never and have never even thought about taking home company and work related information (information that is considered sensitive that is) on my laptop from my employer. That’s just asking for problems.

How hard is it to set up a gateway into, key word here being into, the workplace these days? It’s not very damn hard…matter of fact it’s fairly easy and free if you’re using open-source tools. If I ever have to work on anything out of the office, I tap into work remotely where all the information is left where it’s supposed to be (that would be on the secure network that my IT department maintains). If I go to a client’s place to work on something, again, I work on their information from their machines. I never download their information onto my laptop. To do so is just asking for trouble down the road.

The first thing anyone ever taught me about networking and IT was, is, and will remain the ultimate key to security for anything computer related…physical security. If you make the hardware unavailable to thieves or malicious users, then you immediately close a huge whole in the world of computer security. Leave information where it belongs, on mainframes and servers and connect to it remotely with secure protocols. If you have to put information onto loose hardware devices, then leave the damn device at a secure place, or lock it up in a safe or something. If it’s left on a rack somewhere under lock and key at a secure business where more than likely there is a security system, then I highly doubt thieves are going to steal the rack. If it’s locked up in a nice big safe, then I highly doubt a thief is going to cart off a safe.

I don’t know, maybe I’m taking too much of a simplistic approach to this all…but I think it’s common sense. I tend to sometimes forget that the majority of people seem to lack this personality trait.