Posts Tagged ‘laptop encryption’

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Two Unencrypted Laptops and an iPad of NFL Employees stolen

January 30th, 2011
The new NFL logo went into use at the 2008 draft.
National Football League

National Football League Employee’s Laptop Stolen

If an encryption software had been used to protect the data, there would be minimal chances of Identity theft from the stolen devices. In a fresh incident, two more National Football League (NFL) employee’s laptops have been stolen at the Dallas Convention Center on Sunday.

The stolen laptops belonged to a private investigator and a security consultant based in California. Both employees were preparing the Dallas Convention Center for the NFL Experience. The convention center is hosting the NFL Experience, an interactive theme park with games, displays, autograph sessions and a memorabilia show. These laptops not only stored sensitive information but also not protected with encryption software.

Similar Incident Happened just two weeks ago

A similar incident happened earlier this month in Arlington, a laptop containing NFL and Super Bowl XLV credential information was stolen from a car parked outside a restaurant. According to Arlington police, several thumb drives and security credential artwork were also stolen with the laptop. These devices belonged to a NFL employee working on Super Bowl XLV.

In this case police arrested three people, but was not able to recover the laptop. In the current case Police do not have any suspects but believe that the above two incidents are not related.

NFL Employees left Devices Unattended

Dallas police Sr. Cpl. Kevin Janse said, “Someone stole two laptops and an Apple iPad that had been left unattended for about 25 minutes inside a ballroom at the location. The property belonged to two employees hired by the NFL. None of the devices contained information that would compromise or jeopardize the security of any Super Bowl-related events”, he added.

According to Janse “The devices contained no important security or otherwise sensitive information relating to the Super Bowl” and there was no security concerns related to the theft. The stolen devices were left unattended at a Starbucks kiosk for 25 minutes inside a ballroom.

Janes further said, “The laptop theft was nothing more than a crime of opportunity and that the suspects probably didn’t even realize who the owners of the property were”.

This is just a case of carelessness of NFL employees. It’s a dumb activity to leave important devices at an unfamiliar coffee shop for Twenty Five Minutes. The NFL said that theft didn’t compromise security and only artwork for credentials that was subsequently changed after the theft. We can only hope that NFL would be more active towards securing the data as this was the second laptop theft case in one month.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped

The above mention situation shows how much Full Disk  Encryption is necessary to stay secure and protect your data from the laptop thefts. In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data. Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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Unencrypted Laptop is lost by Doctor, Employed at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospital

January 22nd, 2011

Laptop thefts are the most common ways of security breach. Laptops get stolen from homes, vehicles and other common places are just a plain lost of security breach.

Stolen Laptop Contained Confidential Patient Data

An unencrypted laptop containing confidential patient data was stolen from the house of a junior doctor employed by the Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust. Laptop contained the information of over one thousand patients including names, dates of birth, hospital numbers, as well as details about treatment received by 1,147 orthopedic patients.  The doctor loaded this information onto his personal laptop.

The laptop was stolen in November but the doctor waited for two weeks before informing his superiors about the theft. The reason of this, it is illegal to carry official data and he was not authorized to take the data on his personal system.

Apology Letter Sent to All Affected Individuals

An apology letter was sent to all affected individuals, which was signed by its chief executive Phil Morley. The letter said “I am writing this letter to inform you of the incident and also to apologise unreservedly for the loss of your confidential data. The doctor acted outside trust and NHS regulations in taking unencrypted patient data away from the trust and installing it on his personal computer.I can advise that the trust treats these matters very seriously and the doctor concerned is being managed in accordance with the trust’s policies and procedures”.
According to Hull & East Riding report, the trust temporarily suspended the doctor and scheduled a disciplinary hearing. But now he returned back to work because the result of a disciplinary hearing is pending.

Chris McIntosh, chief exec of encryption tools firm Stonewood, said “This doctor should never have had the opportunity to take unencrypted data home with him. Hull and East Yorkshire Trust needs to have more than regulations in place that simply shift the blame to employees”.

Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust

The Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust operates the Hull Royal Infirmary and Castle Hill Hospital in Cottingham. This breach is the third incident of data breach to affect Hull residents in less than a year. The first case is the theft of sensitive data from A4e and the other one is unauthorized access of sensitive data by an NHS staffer.
McIntosh, said hospital bosses were partly to blame for the latest incident. “It is all very well organisations having regulations on data protection, yet if they can be easily broken by employees, whether knowingly or not, they become meaningless” he added.

Need of Data Protection

There are so many reasons why you should take precaution and encrypt all of your company laptops and USB devices. Just give a look on the recent data breach cases which caused financial loss and identity theft for the customer and caused loss of reputation and legal litigation cases for companies. Encryption can also avoid the necessity to send out data security breach notices. Employer should provide an encrypted and secure system to their employees.

Alertsec is the frontrunner in offering data security, pointsec, encryption, encryption software, data encryption software, computer security software, hard drive encryption, laptop encryption, full disk encryption and computer protection software.

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Centra Says Stolen Laptop Contains Nearly 14,000 Patient Information

December 31st, 2010
Photo of a Dell XPS M140 Laptop.
Laptop Stolen in Georgia

A laptop stolen in Georgia held the names and billing information of nearly 14,000 Centra patients. Lynchburg-based hospital system said someone stole the computer from an employee’s rental car on November 11th.

Laptop Was Stolen From a Car in Georgia

Centra spokeswoman Susan Brandt told The News & Advance that the laptop was taken in November in Alpharetta, Ga., from the trunk of a car rented by an employee. The employee was in Georgia for a training session. The hospital system announced the theft on Monday and Centra sent letters on Friday to patients, whose information might have been stored on the laptop.

Brandt said the number of affected patients represents about 2.5 percent of Centra’s entire patient population. Centra said HIPAA law gives them 60 days to get organized and notify the media and patients of the breach.

Centra Officials Response

Officials said that the computer files did not contain Social Security numbers or other information that could be used in identity theft. It also did not contain any medical history information. The stolen laptop was password-protected and it is not likely that someone could access the files on its hard drive. If someone did reach the file with patient data, they would not find Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, addresses or phone numbers, medical treatment information or credit card data, Brandt said.

The file contained an internal Centra billing number, the patient’s name, the amount being billed to an insurer and codes that identify the insurer. The information was very limited, there were names and account balances listed but everything else was in code. Even though this employee did not break the rules, Centra said it advises against storing information on a laptop’s C-drive. That could become a mandatory rule.

Juan DeLeon, Centra’s Director of Corporate Compliance said “Certainly it gives us an opportunity to address some issues where we may have had some lapses and we will be sure to strengthen those areas going forward”.
DeLeon said “Our policy is to do everything to secure it in the best method possible”. The employee notified police, but the police have not told Centra of any progress in the investigation, he added.

It took some time to determine whose information might have been on the laptop and also to track down their addresses, since their contact information was not included in the laptop’s files. DeLeon said “We certainly did not do it just because we are required to do it, but we did it because it is the right thing to do”.

Centra Sped Up the Process of Adding data encryption to Its Laptops

Centra already had started adding an extra layer of data encryption to its laptops but it has sped up that process, DeLeon said. Since the theft, Centra has reviewed privacy measures with employees, reminding them to store patient data on Centra’s network servers not on individual computers. He said “We are already almost completely done”. The encryption makes it virtually impossible for anyone to break into the hard drive and decrypt the information without the proper credentials.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped

In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data.  Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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Alertsec is Offering Computer Protection Software for Mac OS X

December 26th, 2010
Mac OS logo
Support for Mac OS X Platform

Alertsec Xpress

Alertsec Xpress is used in all organizations that have recognized the need to protect their information. It offers computer protection software from Check Point as a fully customizable and pre-packaged data encryption software solution. Alertsec is the leading company in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and Personal Computers in an easy, convenient and cost-effective way.

Alertsec, a spin-off of Pointsec, has strong financial backing, long experience from encryption software and a security conscious organization. By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (previously known as Pointsec) software, we have created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption. In today’s scenario, information is an organization’s most important asset. As laptops are overtaking desktop PCs as the major source of computing and media storage, laptops frequently store an organization’s most valuable information. The only way to protect information stored on a PC or laptop is by using encryption. That is why laptop encryption is becoming increasingly important.

Service for Mac OS X

Mac Operating System is the world’s most advanced operating system. It is developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. It is a series of graphical user interface based operating systems. After Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X is the most active general purpose operating system in the use on the World Wide Web. Mac OS X comes with a variety of assistive technologies to help those with vision disabilities, including a built-in screen reader, screen & cursor magnification, high contrast settings and more.

Alertsec recently added support for the Mac OS X platform. We provide convenient and cost-effective computer protection software for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Mac OS X. Our customers range is from single-user sole traders and consultants to large multinational companies with offices around the globe.

FileVault and Its Back Drop

FileVault is a system that protects files on a Macintosh computer. FileVault uses encrypted file systems that are mounted and unmounted when the user logs into or out of the system. Early versions of FileVault were slow and caused system to temporarily hang when used with disk-intensive applications such as sound and video editing. The performance of FileVault has been improved in more recent versions of Mac OS X.

There are also certain limitations with fileVault. While migrating fileVault home directories there must be no prior migration to the target computer and the target must have no existing user accounts. If all these conditions are not fulfilled, then prior to migration, FileVault must be disabled at the source.

Check Point Full Disk Encryption Software

Check Point Full Disk Encryption software is trusted and the global leader with more than 4 million users worldwide. The Alertsec Xpress managed security service is based on the Check Point Full Disk Encryption software solution. This software provides the highest level of data security with multi factor pre-boot authentication and the strongest encryption algorithms. For a complete end user experience, the entire hard drive contents including the operating system and even temporary files are automatically encrypted. This software protects corporate information from unauthorized access and prevents costly data breaches when laptops are lost or stolen. It provides comprehensive platform support and fast compliance with the highest security certifications. It is highly scalable and rapidly deployable as fast as 50,000 seats per month.

Alertsec securely managed 24/7 helpdesk which provides a truly cost efficient solution. Our mission is to continuously improve our products and services in order to deliver the easiest and most cost-effective managed encryption service on the market. We are a part of the Durator Group which has been awarded the highest credit rating available. We have offices in the US, UK, Sweden and operate in many other countries around the world through partners.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped:

In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply been reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data.  Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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Another Massive Data Breach in University of Wisconsin

December 18th, 2010
North Hall on the University of Wisconsin, Mad...
University of Wisconsin

The News:

University of Wisconsin-Madison disclosed on last Thursday evening that a campus database of former students and staff had been repeatedly hacked since 2008. The database contained 60,000 pre-2008 university photo identifications that included Social Security numbers. University notified victims about this breach by mail in a letter dated November 30. The letter sent to victims and University Website declared that there was no evidence that anyone’s information was retrieved.

The Incident Website states, “We wanted to make you aware of the incident and let you know what we have done to prevent this from happening in the future”.

This is not First Time:

This is not the first time University of Wisconsin-Madison computers are hacked. A year ago, the University determined that computers in the Chemistry Department were hacked over a several year period compromising the names and Social Security numbers of around 3,000 people. The University did not detect the breach until October 26, 2010 although Wisconsin determined that the recent hacking incident began in 2008.

The major data breaches happened in 2007 and in 2008 involved Social Security numbers. In the 2007 incident, tax forms were mailed to the 171,000 Wisconsin taxpayers with their social security numbers printed on the mailing label and in 2008 incident, a brochure was mailed to the 260,000 recipients of state health care benefits with their social security numbers printed on the mailing label.

What Officials Say:

The advisory letter said, “The University apologizes to you for this situation, we take computer and data security very seriously, making consistent and strong efforts to protect thousands of computers located on the campus.”
School’s IT department said it has reviewed all security procedures and policies and deployed network intrusion detection applications and implemented a vulnerability identification program to better safeguard student and staff data.

Protection is Necessary:

As now a day, Identity theft is an easy practice, anyone with a computer, desktop publishing and a printer can counterfeit a Social Security card with your name and Social Security number. Counterfeit cards can be sold over and over again compounding the identity theft problem with victims. A counterfeit Social security card and a counterfeit birth certificate open the door to getting employment, a driver’s license and a bank account.

So, it is very essential to protect the data of organizations related to education, health etc. that uses social security or credit card details from the people. For computer protection and data security, organizations like this can choose from a variety of services like Data Encryption Software, Hard Drive Encryption, Laptop Encryption, Full Disk Encryption etc.

How Alertsec Xpress Would Have Helped:

In an incident which highlights the need of a data security and recovery software, the threat could have simply be reduced to an insurance matter by a mere investment of $13/month. The information would have been secure with no loss what so ever. That is certainly a small price to pay compared to what can happen if you lose confidential or sensitive data.  Alertsec Xpress offers a very good and easy-to-use laptop security service that includes more than the traditional software licensing model. Feel free to subscribe for your personal 30-day free trial.

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