A UK local council has lost the personal details of hundreds of residents when a memory stick fell out of an employee’s pocket. Details lost include names, addresses, national insurance numbers, ethnicity and more.
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With around 250 data breaches publicly reported in the United States between Jan. 1 and Jun. 12 this year, rogue employees and hackers were the major causes according to figures released this week by the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Theft by employees and hacking were each responsible for 18% of all incidents, an increase of around 10% compared with the same period in 2008.

The Center also found that 14% of breaches so far this year were due to data contained on lost or stolen digital media, such as a laptop or USB thumb drives.  That’s still a significant number – and all the more reason to consider using a secure USB flash drive solution, such as our Cruzer Enterprise range.

When President Obama laid out his ambitious plan to thwart cyberthreats on Friday, he recognised what many have known for a long time – data and networks can be used as weapons against a nation’s security if they are not properly protected.

In his Friday address, he specifically mentioned the 2008 infection of Department of Defense computers by malware, which originated from an infected USB flash drive.

President Obama said:  “In one of the most serious cyber incidents to date against our military networks, several thousand computers were infected last year by malicious software — malware. And while no sensitive information was compromised, our troops and defense personnel had to give up those external memory devices — thumb drives — changing the way they used their computers every day.”

As posted on this blog last year, the spread of malware via USB sticks is easily stemmed by using secure flash drives with onboard anti-malware, such as our Cruzer Enterprise range.  Some aspects of the battle to secure data and networks will be long and difficult.  However, when it comes to securing data on pen drives, it should be a very quick win.

Earlier this week, another UK Health Service body suffered a data breach when a member of staff lost an unencrypted pen drive.  The drive contained the details and medical records of thousands of patients, including patients’ names, addresses, dates of birth, hospital and national insurance numbers and details of their medical treatment.
 
The data had been downloaded against data handling regulations, and has not been found as yet, forcing the organisation to make a public apology and write to all the patients whose details have been lost. 

This is in contrast to a similar UK health organisation which deployed SanDisk’s secure USB flash drives to all its key staff, to secure mobile data and protect against just this type of breach.  By using the Cruzer Enterprise drives, data is encrypted without the user being able to tamper with the process, and without affecting drive performance or usage.  This makes it a win-win both for the organisation and for the users.  An altogether healthier approach to security.