I read a story a week about a company or government entity that has lost a laptop and is freaking out because people’s privacy, key company or government data is now gone and at risk. The Daily Mail just sent a note to all of their journalists and freelancers about how all of their bank information was lost on a laptop:

The letters went out to journalists and other freelancers employed by Associated, which also publishes the Mail on Sunday and Metro, and regional newspaper publisher Northcliffe. Both are owned by parent company Daily Mail & General Trust.

Those affected were told their name, bank account number and sort code had been lost. The letter, from the group finance director, Simon Dyson, also advised them to consult a government identity theft website for advice. He apologised for any annoyance and inconvenience, saying the "incident was inadvertently caused by a technical issue".

When heading to a conference the other week, I received one of those famous emails with the word ‘ACTION’ in big letters in the subject. The email was quite simple: you have been identified that you have a laptop, you are running Vista and you are heading a conference so encrypt your drive using Bitlocker (drive encryption). There was a little euphemism in the email where they ‘offered to help you’ with this process at the conference with IT staff on hand (which really means, there are no excuses).

A quick search on the web served up these stories (there are hundreds)

• US government loses hundreds of thousands of tax data files
• Agilient loses 51,000 employee’s data
• E&Y loses 243,000 credit cards data
• Royal Navy loses data on 600,000 people

Scary.The Privacy Rights Clearing House reported last month that 40% of reported private-sector data breach events in 2006 were due to laptop theft. Gartner Group came out with an interesting read on cloud computing this week – highlighting the security challenges ahead.

Nice thing, I didn’t need IT. It was one click and it was done. I am now secure.