Security Goes South

There are two kinds of security risks...those that are personal (feeling secure) and those that are defensive (like locked in a vault). I've got two interesting stories today about each.

First is the Jitterbug. It is pretty much geared towards seniors by their advertising because the cell phone is free of all the unnecessary add-ons one my age might wish in a phone. It's purely the basics one would need. Now given probably most of the users might get this for emergencies, the Jitterbug has one flaw (it has been recalled) - they failed to connect to 911. Now personally, that's one of the main reasons I have my phone with me in the car - if there is an emergency. The personal security is out the window for the owners of those faulty phones.

The second is that of defensive security and this one goes out to the government. They had wanted to get some money off of old hard drives so they had a brilliant notion to sell them on eBay. They just forgot one thing - to wipe off the old data. Now there is a ton of sensitive military data floating around. From a Daily Mail article (UK):

British researchers found the data while studying more than 300 hard disks bought at computer auctions, computer fairs and eBay.

The experts also uncovered other sensitive information including bank account details, medical records, confidential business plans, financial company data, personal id numbers, and job descriptions.

The drives were bought from the UK, America, Germany, France and Australia by BT's Security Research Centre in collaboration with the University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith Cowan University in Australia and Longwood University in the US.

A spokesman for BT said they found 34 per cent of the hard disks scrutinised contained 'information of either personal data that could be identified to an individual or commercial data identifying a company or organisation.'

It makes you wonder if we should use the word security anymore since it's so easy to lose it.