AlertBoot Full Disk Encryption — Comprehensive Security for Complete Peace of Mind

Twelve desktop computers were stolen from the human resource offices of the Oakland school district.  And while there were security policies in place, district spokesman Troy Flint pointed out that “there's only so much you can do when people are determined to accomplish an objective.”  This is another case where the use of full disk encryption would have limited the damage to the loss of the hardware only, since the use of encryption services like AlertBoot ensures data security.

A laptop computer has gone missing from the grounds of the Rochester Institute of Technology.  While the RIT breach does not affect all at RIT, a sizable part of the New York‑based institution’s populace is affected.  Anyone who, going as far back as 1968, has applied to enroll at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf is affected—approximately 12, 700 people—as well as 1,100 others of the RIT community whose information was being used as part of a control group for some kind of internal study at RIT.  While it has not alluded to, it seems pretty obvious to me that a laptop encryption solution like AlertBoot was not used to secure the contents of the now missing computer.  The information that could end up being compromised includes names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers.

A Reynoldsburg City School district laptop, which did not make use of hard drive encryption like AlertBoot to protect the information on the computer’s internal disk, was stolen from an employee while he attended a wedding.  The laptop was stolen from his car, a not so infrequent data breach scenario covered by this blog.  Makes one wonder if cars ought to be banned in the name of data security.

£6.99.  That’s how much a 36 year old anonymous computer programmer paid for a computer on eBay that held the details of 35,000 taxpayers in the UK.  This is the second case where a computer sold on eBay with sensitive information ended up in the hands of a civic‑minded person.  And this is just another example where the use of full disk encryption solutions like AlertBoot would have stopped the incident from turning into a full‑blown data breach.

The newspaper Scotland on Sunday broke the story that the NHS Dumfries and Galloway has lost two USB flash drives with information on patients.  The memory sticks in question did not feature disk encryption that would have ensured information security.  And, the breach was only made public because Scotland on Sunday filed a Freedom of Information request.