Boeing Employee Fired After Laptop With Employee Info Is Stolen

[ChromeFoundry]

Dec 15, 2006 04:56 PM

Boeing has fired an employee whose stolen laptop contained identifying information on 382,000 current and former employees.

The employee, who has not been identified, was fired because he violated company policy by downloading the information onto the laptop and not encrypting it, says Tim Neale, a spokesman for Boeing. The laptop, which had been taken out of the office, was stolen the first week of December, he added.

This was the third laptop theft in two years that resulted in lost employee data at Boeing. This latest missing laptop contained the names, Social Security numbers and in some instances the home addresses of both current and former (mostly retired) employees.

The theft is under investigation.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?a...

[Trajan]

1. There is a good chance ....

I am one of those names ....

[ChromeFoundry]

2. The company is providing credit monitoring services

to affected employees for the next three years.

...I hope you are not one to be needing this service.

[bluerum]

5. That does not instill a sense of security. Corporate responsibility

for the data needs to be enforced.

[davekriss]

11. An aside on "names"

Looking at the "names" on your footer graphic, I wonder if any of the Republithug brownshirts that stopped the vote counting in (was it) Miami have today a twinge or two of bad conscience. Their actions, meant to look like a populist upwelling of discontent with the vote counting, has resulted in the death of nearly 3,000 US servicemen, the maiming of nearly 20,000, and the death of up to 650,000 Iraqis.

Sure hope they can sleep at night (but, then, I know they sleep, because their lack of ethics and conscience was apparent when they stormed the count back in 2000).

As I said, just an aside...

[anotherdrew]

13. why aren't each of those people being hounded by a video crew for comment?

they should each be interviewed and documented fully

we really need a news/info collective with a budget, I'd pay $50 a month to such an org if it were run seriously.

[bluerum]

3. Damn. How about IT systems that let lame brains like this copy

gbytes of data and carry it around on a laptop? This is preventable.

Corporations need to accept responsibility for this kind of crap. Firing someone who probably knew better but was too lazy to do the right thing will not solve this problem.

[ChromeFoundry]

6. true...

if companies would just implement media encryption at the laptop, and Microsoft would make it so it was not so easy to thwart the Administrator password with a simple boot-disk utility- much of this type of vulnerabilities would be diminished.

[global1]

8. This Doesn't Instill A Lot of Confidence In Me On Having To Fly On.....

a Boeing Airplane. Here is a company that constructs airplanes that tens of thousands of people fly in every day. I don't understand how they can do that and not be able to secure their confidential employee information. Notice that you never see a laptop gone missing with 'trade secrets' on it.

[OhioChick]

4. Nice..........

How many "stolen laptops" (info) have we dealt with here in the US over the last several years?

on edit to add:

Here's one I found from today.....

Mass. settles with financial services firm over stolen laptop

December 15, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Minneapolis-based Ameriprise Financial Services Inc. has agreed to pay $25,000 to the commonwealth of Massachusetts in connection with the loss of a laptop containing personal and financial data on thousands of Massachusetts residents, Secretary of State William Galvin said this week.

The laptop was stolen in December 2005 from an Ameriprise employee who had left it unsecured and unattended in a locked vehicle in a parking lot. The exact location of the theft is unclear, although the laptop has since been recovered.

The computer contained information on about 158,000 customers, including their names, account numbers or Social Security numbers and account values. It also held identifiable personal information about 68,000 current and former Ameriprise advisors, including their names and Social Security numbers.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=...

[ChromeFoundry]

7. More than you would guess...

http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm

and that is just the "reported" ones

[northofdenali]

9. Holy shit! I know many people who could be on those lists...

Fortunately, none in my household, but damn this stuff is getting out of hand. What, though, can we actually do to combat it? Anything at all? I mean, the info is out there, regardless..

[ChromeFoundry]

12. Simple...

Force companies compensatory and punitive damages to individuals caused by their negligence. This holds true to all these companies that have off-shored your credit card information to places like India, where there is a rapidly growing trend of fraud on US citizens without your knowledge.

[SKKY]

10. We need a HIPAA for Privacy Act Information...

...I'm willing to bet that if some of the regulations in HIPAA were applied to Privacy Act Information, stuff like this
wouldn't happen nearly as much as it does. After those 2 laptops were taken from the Veterans Affairs office, I'm just
waiting for the shoe to fall on my credit report and bank account.