mobile security

Mobile data and importance of disk encryption

Filed under: Identity Security — webmaster at 9:10 am on Friday, November 24, 2006

It seems almost every day new articles appear on new websites relating to the theft or loss of laptops. This week, the UK based Nationwide building society will mail all of their 11m (yes, ELEVEN MILLION) customers to inform them of a laptop which was stolen in August. Why it has taken Nationwide 3 months to mention this hiccup will only serve to further exacerbate customer anger. Trying to cover things up in this way will cost them more dearly than if they were just open and honest in the first place.
Other details Nationwide refuse to disclose include:

what customer information was on the laptop
where the laptop was stolen from
how many customer details were on the laptop
why so much sensitive data was there in the 1st place
if any encryption was used laptop was using

All in all, this amounts to a huge embarrassing situation for Nationwide. Looking at the big picture, it seems they first tried to sweep the incident under the carpet and that has just made matters worse. Furthermore, failing to answer basic questions about the event and how secure the laptop will surely makes matters worse.

Who does incident handling and damage control at Nationwide?

If they have they don’t appear to be doing a very good job of it. The only useful piece of information that they have disclosed is:

the information did not include any PINs, passwords, account balance information or memorable data.

They go on to say:

since the loss of the laptop we have taken steps to improve our security measures further and provide additional protection to our customers

Could this be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted? I certainly think so.

The main customer concern here seems to be one of Identity Theft. In the UK, a criminal needs very little information in order to impersonate you. Your name, age, sex and address is all they need in order to start impersonating you. For more information about protecting your identity, see the UK Home Office’s Identity Theft website.

If you wish to read on about other laptops that have been stolen this week, the BBC is reporting another interesting theft of some laptops from some offices used by LogicaCMG that contain payroll information for 50% of the workforce of London’s Metropolitan Police.

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