Released: October 20, 2006

Feds keep losing your data

Source: By David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle

If you can’t trust the federal government with your personal information, who can you trust? A new report from the House Government Reform Committee finds that no fewer than 19 federal agencies have experienced security breaches since January 2003 - a total of 788 cases of people’s confidential data either being lost or stolen.

Because the federal government has no disclosure requirements in the event of security breaches, “few of these incidents have been reported publicly,” the report finds, adding that data losses have become “a government-wide occurrence.”

“Only a small number of the data breaches reported to the committee were caused by hackers breaking into computer systems online,” it says. “The vast majority of data losses arose from physical thefts of portable computers, drives and disks, or unauthorized use of data by employees.”

The report also finds that many security breaches involved companies that signed contracts with the government to manage data or information technology.

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