Tape Drive Stolen from Intern’s Car Causes Major Encryption Purchase
Tape Drive Stolen from Intern’s Car Causes Major Encryption Purchase
December 12, 2007: Very public and very embarrassing moments can do amazing things when it comes to opening the purse strings of an organisation trying to prevent the same thing from ever occurring again, such is the case with the Ohio State Governments massive data encryption purchase after the loss of a backup tape from an intern’s car.
It seems innocent enough, when transporting goods from one place to another the natural inclination is to whisk it over yourself in the car, why not throw it on the back seat as you travel as that’s where everyone throws things when they’re driving. The only problem is when the goods you’re transporting is a backup tape with the personal and financial details of 64,467 state employees, 19,388 former employees and 47,245 Ohio taxpayers.
Those in the data world remember the incident well, as when the Ohio State Government (OSG) backup tape was stolen from a 22-year old intern’s car the collective fears of every data manager in the world were being played out on television. To prevent the incident ever happening again the OSG is turning to encryption in the form of McAfee’s Safe Boot product and has acquired 60,000 licenses of the product to protect its records.
The data encryption software is aiming to increase the security of the state’s data regardless of the storage device and will be applied to everything from laptops, PC’s, memory sticks and removable storage.
The Ohio Department of Administrative Services worked with a task force of 37 IT professionals from 30 different state agencies to select the optimal solution to the embarrassing problem.
“The task force did an exemplary job of outlining and consolidating security requirements in a very tight time frame.” said Steve Edmonson, Chief Information Officer, Ohio State.
According to Edmonson, the massive purchasing power of the state was leveraged to negotiate a contract with Safe Boot that will result in a cost savings of $US 3.7 Million ($AU 4.22 Million).
“The bottom line is tax dollars are being used wisely through this selection and the negotiated contract,” Edmonson said.