There seems to be news everyday about huge data losses from the private sector, government agencies and education institutions. Is there more data theft today than before? Or is it simply a matter of data breach disclosure that has become mandatory as of late?

We would like to think it is the latter of these, but more than likely is a combination of both. While there has been more effort to enforce disclosure of data breaches, in reality this does not always seem to be the case. [ refer to my article on defacement disclosure ] 

Several of the latest breaches appear to be from simple thefts of equipment, that just happen to also have sensitive data on them [ as seen in the latest VA data loss ]...

Together with carelessness, the resulting data loss is only a side effect of the original theft. From information collected by  PortAuthority, it seems that no one is immune, and the situation appears to be only getting worse. 

Who's fault is the data losses? Having confidential and personal information data on assets that employees are allowed to remove from the workplace, or have access to while outside of the work environment are the fault of the company, and should be regulated more stringently. Employer's need to educate users as well as manage and track their own assets, and be held accountable. 

There are many tools available to encrypt sensitive data that work seamlessly with todays operating systems and most applications, and are designed to be easy for non-tech savy end- users. So even if hardware is compromised with sensitive data, that data is not at risk even if the hard drives are used on another system ( a common problem with BIOS password protection only ).  

We can only hope this trend does not continue....

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