A laptop which belonged to the Oregon National Guard member was stolen earlier this week forcing the military to contact all the members who might be impacted by this incident.
As per the details by the Oregon National Guard, the laptop was stolen a couple of days ago on 21st of June from a vehicle. Apparently, the laptop was being used by the guard member to do work from home.
Captain Stephen Bomar, Chief of Public Affairs for the Oregon National Guard, said in a news release, “Although this laptop is password protected, with potential exposure of individual personal information, we are doing everything possible to notify individuals about the theft” .
The Oregon National Guard and The National Guard Bureau are individually contacting service members whose sensitive information may be compromised. Legal services are also available in the event a service member needs it through the Oregon National Guard Office of the Staff Judge Advocate.
Once again the incident raises serious eyebrows about the methods adopted by large organizations to secure data, store data and encrypt sensitive and critical information.
The laptop theft incident is not new as earlier in April this year, burglars had attacked the home of Jerome Avery stealing a laptop from his house.
Get Laptop Encryption now !!
While huge sums are spent on protecting internal networks from hackers, employees are walking out the front door with laptops that not only have vast quantities of data stored on them, but also have applications connecting to internal networks and protected websites.
80% of information theft results from lost or stolen equipment. 50% of network intrusions take place using credentials from lost or stolen equipment. With laptop encryption installed, none of the information or credentials would have been lost.
