"We see the headlines all the time: 'Company X Loses 30,000,000
Customer Social Security Numbers and Other Intimately Personal and
Financial Data! Haha, Boy Are Our Faces Red!' And it always turns
out to be some 'contractor' (notice how it's never an employee) who
had the entire wad on a laptop with (seemingly) a terabyte hard
drive, which was then lost or stolen, but nobody is quite sure
where or when. Or it's a giant box of backup tapes that was being
transported by a vendor, who apparently cannot afford a vehicle
with locking doors. To me it sounds pretty darned lame, even
surreal; why in the heck do contractors get all that sensitive data
in the first place, and why do they need the world's databases on
their laptops? Why are giant boxes of sensitive backup tapes being
carted around by some minimum-wage kid in a beatermobile? How come
they never quite know what data is missing, and if it was encrypted
or protected in any way...?"
