Last week was a dark day for the fight against identity theft, as a laptop stolen from Boeing carried with it personal information on 382,000 employees. While not giving specific details as to where or how it was stolen, it was mentioned that the employee who lost the laptop violated company policy because of it. This isn't exactly new for Boeing, with this being the third laptop they have had lifted from them in the past year. While none of the data has yet been compromised, they are looking to prevent misuse in the event it happens again:
After the first incident, Neale said Boeing installed encryption software on employees' laptops so that when they saved confidential data to their hard drives, the data could be encrypted. Unfortunately, Neale said, most employees don't use the software, prompting Boeing to now look for ways to automatically encrypt confidential data on employee computers.
Why, exactly, are laptops walking out of company doors with this personal information on it in the first place? You'd think the simplest solution to avoiding this sort of data theft would be to not make it possible.