Comments on: Hacker may have pilfered personal data from USDA

Agriculture Dept. tells 26,000 employees, contractors that their names, Social Security numbers, photos may be at risk.

[Nkully86]

So much for national security

It is sad to now think that the most notable victims of security breaches these days are high departments within the U.S. government. Oh wait, nevermind - this has been the trend for the past 2 months. My general thought was that by now the government would...

a) Have the most technologically advanced security systems and know when to implement them
b) Have learned from the mistakes of the hundreds of other companies within the past few months

It seems like the only thing they are doing for the potential victims is offering them benefits AFTER their identities have been falsely used. How about we better protect these employees and take care of our data BEFORE it gets stolen.
http://www.essentialsecurity.com/Documents/article1.htm

[marileev]

Is Gov. Paying Attention to Privacy Hearings?

As many other industries are regulated, for privacy http://news.com.com/Tech+titans+lobby+for+national+consumer+privacy+laws/2100-1028_3-6086039.html?tag=cd.top issues: HIPAA, GLBA, SOX, one would think the bodies setting up rules would take notice themselves. The USDA, VA and even Universities could take notice and set up better Risk Policies and install something as simple as Remote Laptop Security http://www.essentialsecurity.com/howitworks_laptop.htm or access controls to their electronic files.

[J.D. Oder II]

Unsure?

"However, subsequent forensic analysis leaves uncertain whether personal information was protected," the agency said in a statement.

The above statement is absolutely ludicrous. In the financial transaction processing world in which I live, I interact with some of the best data forensic people in the industry, and I cannot believe that anyone in our government would think the populous was so nieve to accept such a statement. Was the data encrypted? Was the data protected by firewall systems? Was the computer hardened?

Uncertain whether it was protected...? Give us a break.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

"unsure"...

That's marketroid for "It happened, but we're not owning up that we screwed up. We can't say it DIDN'T happen, so, umm, we'll say we're 'unsure'".