Kennedy Space Center experiences laptop theft
Where and how was the laptop stolen?
The laptop theft of NASA’s employee took place outside the home of the employee’s car where he had left his laptop. This theft has caused 2300 employees of Kennedy space centre to suffer. The laptop contained personal information like employee names, race, and national origin, and gender, date of birth, contact information, college affiliation and grade-point average. It also included their Social Security numbers which obviously are at stake. A human resources office reported on March 5 and the theft took place at Orange County where the employee is residing. Officials said that there is low probability of exploitation of personal information of Kennedy space centre employees.
NASA is providing affected employees with one year’s worth of free cyber, identity, and credit monitoring and recovery services whose personal information was in the stolen laptop. Kennedy Space Centre spokesman Allard Beutel said initially the numbers of affected employees was predicted much lower than in real. Even though lots of data was stored on the agency servers, the employee’s laptop also contained more sensitive information and security numbers.
This theft has definitely opened eyes of all IT security systems and they are taking additional efforts towards data protection, encryption of devices. Officials said that they will be reviewing all IT security policies and practices to avoid such incidents in future. All the laptops including sensitive and general data at KSC will be encrypted by September 2012. However, this was planned and was going to be implemented before the theft took place.
NASA officials had a hard time ‘cleaning their act’. Any data has the possibility of being hacked if not encrypted properly. Lost laptops or loss of any electronic system that contains sensitive information could prove as the huge loss for any business. There are many methods to protect data on laptops such as alarms, locks or visual deterrents. It is always advisable to have a backup of data on servers, and to delete the sensitive information on laptops when the work is over.
We all are aware about the benefits of encrypting devices. Encryption can be done to a specific file or a whole disk. It ensures us peace of mind. We feel relaxed as our sensitive information is secured. Encryption also provides unauthorised access protection to our data. Encryption may be useless if authentication is not there. Some corporations need to pay huge fines if the laptops stolen are not encrypted. If the data stolen is very sensitive and related to business, it will cost you a lot for your business. Encryption will ensure that even if your laptop gets stolen, the data cannot be hacked by the best hackers also. After all, confidentiality is what we all need.
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