Posted on 06/09/2006 8:13:26 AM PDT by driftdiver
Stolen personal data for 26.5 million veterans and military personnel may have been erased by teenagers who sold the computer equipment, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday.
He explained that the burglary occurred in an Aspen Hill, Md., neighborhood in which there had been a pattern of thefts by young burglars who took computer equipment, wiped them clean of the data and then sold them on college campus or high schools.
"We remain hopeful this was a common random theft and that no use will be made of this data," Nicholson said. "However, certainly we cannot count on that."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The VA policy for years was to train their own developers and data dudes internally from staff. I know this because I was a consultant/instructor for the company that had the contract. I don't know if this policy exists today.
In a class of 20, there were 2 or 3 qualified candidates.
I worked closely with VA data analysts and DBAs for several years. They were OK but there were no shining stars in the group.
I often wonder if I know this person, who had no business putting this data set on their personal laptop. Data analysts can be the most dangerous people in IT because they and a very few others are the only ones that have unfettered access to databases and data warehouses.
$1000 is not enough.
Gee, I must have left off the just kidding icon...
"BTW - no one lost there jobs over this."
And they won't either - because that accountability crap might catch on - can't have that.
This is also known as "whistling in the dark past the cemetary."
I think the news didn't make the news for something like 10 days...by which time they would probably had done their usual routine....and even if they did not, IF they were just teens, they would have probably gotten scared sh*tless after the news came out and disposed of the computers....if you're a two-bit burglar you're not gonna be thrilled to know that the FBI has now made your piddling little robbery priority #1.....
They also may have taken out all of the hard drives after reading the papers and sold them for a price to higher level criminals.
Thats what I've been saying.
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