Comments on: Laptop theft puts data of 98,000 at risk

PC stolen from UC Berkeley graduate admissions office held sensitive data on thousands of people, stretching back three decades.

Real Nice!

Why would you keep that sort of information on a laptop to begin with? Get a server and store it there. At least that's a *little more* secure, not to mention harder to walk away with.

[ZeroJCF]

Inexcusable

It is unbelievable that a school, especially one so esteemed, can let something like this happen. Who in the world puts sensitive information like that on a laptop?? That information should be put a secured server somewhere. This basically lets everybody know that CAL Berk is a joke when it comes to Data Security. They also say that they have not got everything in compliance in regards to data encryption?Nice try. But if my workstations need this done, then the ones with sensitive data (SSN) and also are ?mobile? get done first; Inexcusable. I would love to debate someone from their MIS dept. about how this happened. I would love to hear their excuses. Great school to get your CIS degree?..as long as it?s not in Security.

[Stating]

Eggheads And Ivory Towers

Thank goodness the smart people at Berkeley are informed about the risk of downloading sensitive, personal information from secure servers. And thank goodness they would never do anything so foolish as to build replicas of these databases in things like Excel and Access. And thank goodness they would never be so foolish as to take this information offsite to unsecured areas via laptops, CD ROMS, DVDs, or memory sticks. And thank goodness they would never load this sensitive information into their home computers. to work on it after hours. And thank goodness the rest of the workforce in this country is smart enough to avoid doing the same thing that the smart people at Berkeley do not do. And thank goodness there are severe legal penalties for foolish people who breach the public's security.

Keith
www.techcando.com

Fluke ?, URL

The woman I saw interviewed on tv the other night played it off as a total fluke--- (paraphrasing) "the computer was in a room that's pretty much always locked, but just happened to be unlocked at the time, and the computer was scheduled to have security software installed that afternoon, but didn't have it yet." Sounds like someone with an important job has become more than a little sloppy. Here's the site with number to call, though I haven't been able to get through yet.