Lose your Laptop; Go to Jail
19 11 2007The ICO in the UK told reporters that they are considering criminal punishment for individuals who lose unencrypted laptops. I think they may need to tweak that statement a bit to say “companies who don’t use encrypted laptops will be punished”. They can’t really expect the individuals to understand and implement encryption technology, can they? I like where they are going with this though. If you are going to carry data in a non-secure laptop with other peoples personal information than your company should face criminal charges if it’s lost or stolen. When CEO’s face serious charges for these offenses than the security that should already be in place will magically appear and you 
will see less of these cases. Recently GAP Inc. had a similar case where a laptop containing a years worth of job applicants data was lost.
“Cost shouldn’t ever be used as an excuse to have poor security and it won’t help you in court when you’re getting sued.”
Source: ComputerWorld UK
