Latest VA Data Breach Worse Than Initially Reported
from the much-worse dept
After the Veterans Administration’s big data loss last year, the agency made a big point about how it was going to clean up its act and start encrypting all sensitive data. That claim was pretty well busted a few weeks ago, after the administration announced that it had lost a hard drive containing info on 48,000 vets, much of it unencrypted. It turns out that the agency’s initial statement on how much data was lost was a little on the low side… by a factor of 10, actually. Apparently, the hard drive had sensitive data on 535,000 people, as well as non-sensitive data on another 1.3 million non-VA physicians, alive and dead. Some are wondering whether the VA deliberately low-balled the initial number in hopes of downplaying the severity of the loss. While this is a possibility, it seems equally likely that the VA just doesn’t have a good handle on things, and that it honestly didn’t know what was on the hard drive. Or maybe the VA felt the need to boost the number since it was worried that it was losing its title as the worst handler of data to the FBI.
Comments on “Latest VA Data Breach Worse Than Initially Reported”
Minor correction..
From the original news source (The Birmingham News): “The hard drive also may have included data, not all of it sensitive, on about 1.3 million non-VA physicians, both living and dead, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson said in a statement.”
Re: Minor correction..
Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out…
What a shock... Well, I wish it was even a supris
This is so typical in so many ways. The VA screws over the people that fought and bled for our nation, as usual. A government agency either doesn’t have its act together or tries to minimize the damage, as usual.
None of these scenarios is acceptable.
Call your congressmen, people. Irritate them until they have no choice but to treat our men and women in uniform with dignity and respect, if only just to get you off their ass. Hell, irritate them until they get their heads and puppeteers out of their asses and try to do what is right, for once. Remember, the ONLY benefit of a democracy is that you can annoy the hell out of the elected representatives.
Even if you disagree with what is going on worldwide, these people fight and die to protect YOU and YOURS, and they damn well deserve to be taken care of.
Why the heck does a *laptop* have 500,000+ ID’s on it anyway? What the *heck* could a person do with that much info on a *laptop*?
You can’t query it and get a response back in any decent amount of time….
You can’t print it….
There’s no reason to have *any* personal information on a laptop – it should all be on a secure server and connected to remotely.
Jeeze, these people are *stupid*!
The VA
The amount of time it’s taking them to process my VA Claim, hell I thought they were still using a stone tablet to record and disseminate data. The VA is one screwed up organization and someone should do something about.