Comments on: White House orders better security for sensitive data

Office of Management and Budget gives agencies 45 days to comply with guidelines for laptops, handhelds.

[Nkully86]

After 89,399,953 - Its about time

Wow...I must applaud the government for FINALLY implementing this. These new rules and regulations are a start and hopefully can only get stricter over time. The next step we need to take is to move this beyond a "recommendation".

I have been up to date on nearly every security breach over the past few months and according to:
http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ChronDataBreaches.htm#CP
the total number of people affected has been 89,399,953 since February of 2005.

While the government has done a good job in finally establishing this as a major National problem, it took them far too long. Why did they wait until nearly 90 MILLION people were affected before this. It's not too late, but it coulda/shoulda been done quite a while back.

Sadly, a majority of these data breaches were caused by the government's lack of emphasis on security so establishing these laws is the least they can do. While the government continues to ammend their policies on security and encryption they should read up on some recent facts of email encryption:
http://www.essentialsecurity.com/Documents/article15.htm

[marileev]

About Time

With the rampant data thefts, it's about time that the Government's officially responded. The article says, "The request comes in the wake of several embarrassing government security breaches due to losses of laptops holding sensitive information," embarrassment is an understatement - what about flagrant disregard for personal information. Let's not forget that last week the FTC also lost a laptop. There are solutions out there, but organizations need to use them before it's too late http://www.essentialsecurity.com/howitworks_laptop.htm

[mystereojones]

How about NOT taking the data home

That would be a start, right?

[Nkully86]

Completely Agree

Seems like that would solve all of our problems, eh?

How many of these laptops have been stolen from inside the business or department?

[WulfTheSaxon]

Unbreakable Encryption

Nobody has ever broken 256bit AES encryption (the best out there, which I assume is what they're going to use...), and nobody expects it to be broken for at least another decade.