Posted on 11/18/2005 7:09:39 PM PST by sionnsar
CHICAGO - A computer that contained Social Security numbers and other personal information for 161,000 current and former Boeing Co. employees was stolen, the company said Friday.
Boeing said it had no evidence that any of the employee information - which included birthdays and banking information in some cases - was accessed or misused. It added that no sensitive company information or supplier or customer data was stored on the computer, which was owned by the company but stolen from a non-Boeing site.
Chicago-based Boeing said it is in the process of notifying affected employees of the security breach and helping them enroll in fraud-alert programs at the nation's three major credit reporting agencies.
The company said it is investigating the theft along with law enforcement authorities.
"We are taking a number of steps to minimize any potential damage that could result from this violation of our security procedures," Rick Stephens, senior vice president of human resources and administration, said in a statement.
It's my understanding that laptop hard drives can be password protected and that this is about as secure as commercial encryption gets.
Am I wrong?
I was asking about what is possible. It seems irresponsible not to password protect sensitive data on laptop. My understanding is that laptop drives have a built in protection that is difficult to break, if it is used.
Regular old Windows logon passwords are easy to get around. Windows has an encryption feature that is very hard to crack but I think it only works on files and / or folders and I assume people rarely use it, but it's good. And the best - and what should've been on this laptop - is a third party program than encrypts the entire hard drive and is nearly impossible to crack.
OK, the feature I am speaking of seems to be new.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1825740,00.asp
I read about a customer in a computer store setting a password that made the drive useless to the store owner.
Seems like any laptop with sensitive information should be encrypted. Windows makes it easy. I assume Linux and MacOS do too.
Yeah that Seagate. That's actually a little more than a program, but that's what I was thinking about.
This same thing happened to SAIC employees this year. Now Boeing. I worked for SAIC and my wife works for Boeing. Both of us have had our social security numbers ripped off at each company. My SS is in the Boeing info and her SS is in the SAIC info.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.