May 17, 2007
Last week, InformationWeek reported that tapes containing sensitive data on some IBM employees and customers vanished from a contractor's vehicle in late February just miles from IBM headquarters in Armonk, NY. An IBM spokesperson told InformationWeek that the tapes carried "different levels of protection." Other news outlets reported that only some of the tapes were encrypted. IBM has since notified affected employees (and offered them a year of free credit monitoring) and placed ads in local newspapers offering a reward for the tapes' return.
Todd "Turbo" Watson, who blogs about On Demand Business at IBM, sums up one of the problems:
Our mistake should be other companies' lesson: Encrypt the ---- tapes. All of them.
Yet I've got questions, and I bet many of you do, too:
* What kind of security do companies demand from their shipping/courier/transport partners?
* How much of the responsibility for this breach is IBM's and how much is the unnamed contractor's?
* Do companies enforce data governance policies when dealing with partners/suppliers?
* Why don't companies routinely encrypt data in transit, whether it's moving around the network or just down the highway?
* And, finally, my question from last week's post: Is anyone getting information security right?
Are these the questions you're asking? Is there anyone out there with answers?
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