Government Computer Headed For Sale Had Confidential Information
By
Humphrey Cheung,
published on June 23, 2008 at 5:00 AM
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: government, computers, confidential | Themes: Business
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: government, computers, confidential | Themes: Business
Syndication:
Topeka (KS) - Surplus government computers headed for public sale were discovered to have confidential information. The Kansas Department of Administration did an internal audit of 15 surplus machines and found that seven had confidential information; one even had the Social Security numbers of 2856 people. Auditors say most of the computers were simply reformatted and that a freeware undelete utility could have easily recovered the information.
More than 600 surplus computers were sold last year and the department doesn’t know how many of those machines still contained confidential info.
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One would have thought their I.T. dept. would have had a few people assigned to removing the HDDs before the sale.
I would wager that their I.T. department is understaffed. That or they would miss their budget targets by removing and replacing sensitive hard drives. If they do not voice there opinion strongly enough to a high enough person, bureaucracy will overrule them.
Recently I repaired an Apple at some corporation, it was only one Mac in an office with hundreds of PC's so the tech was clueless. Anyways I had to make a very strong argument to get them to replace their 5+ year old dead Mac which I would have charge $750 to repair when they could get a refurbished iMac from Apple for $950 that was about 6-8 times faster.