Sideswiped on Your Telecommute

The FBI will be activating a new phone number today for anyone with information on the stolen laptop from the Veteran's Association. For those who don't know the whole story, in brief, a laptop was stolen from the home of a VA official who was telecommuting. Although there has been no evidence to the contrary, it is believed that the information of nearly 26 million people may have been stolen on that same laptop. Further investigation has found that there may actually be even higher numbers of people whose information has been stolen along with the laptop. So you can figure out why there is such a hubub in terms of getting this laptop recovered.

Unless the thief knew exactly who and what the owner of the laptop did for a living, it is doubtful that the thief (or thieves) took the laptop with the purpose of using the information on so many of our veterans. It's been over a month and so far there have been no major incidents to report. Then again this isn't like the movies. If this had been the plot for "Ocean's Thirteen" or something we would have seen George Clooney-esque people running around with jazzy music in the background dressed in military uniforms looking to get billions away from the government. Again, this doesn't seem to be the case but this is reality we're talking about. Any possible incidents of identity theft would likely be on a smaller scale. A fake credit card here, a phony bank account transfer there. Over time it may add up but we seem to be waiting for Brad Pitt, Matt Damon (and an uncredited Don Cheadle) and crew to show up saying, "Hey we got the laptop!"

But what does this really boil down to? The key issue here is that no matter what security procedures are implemented in our offices and workplaces, once we begin telecommuting all that security is effectively thrown out the window. Now I don't know about you, but the vast majority of people out there don't have badged security guards who check your ID before you enter your home. We generally don't have security monitors and alarm systems either. Okay some people do have Brinks or ADT but it's not the same as having armed Marines guarding your site. So when we telecommute from home, this information is more or less 'out there.'

Everyone talks about moving to a paperless environment. I agree that it would make the world a much cleaner place overall. I'm sure the trees would thank us in any case! There are of course some drawbacks. About two months ago one of my jump drives failed and I lost all the information on it. Sure it was only 512 MBs but still, that was a whole lot of information that I lost. However, the more and more we come to rely on having information stored electronically, the more and more likely these cases of stolen identities will become. I mean can you imagine attempting to haul 26 million file folders out of a VA office? I can tell you it would take a whole lot more than Danny Ocean and his gang of eleven to make that robbery.