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November 18, 2005

The Memory Stick Nightmare

Bob Sullivan points out a real story of data loss - and what is certainly going to be increasingly common the next few years in HELP! I LEFT MY IDENTITY IN THE BACKSEAT OF A TAXI:

Last month, Wilcox Memorial Hospital in Kauai had to inform 120,000 past and present patients that their private information had been misplaced. Their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, even medical record numbers had been placed on one of those tiny USB flash drives -- and now, according to a letter sent home, the drive was missing.

I've thought I've lost my own personal USB widget any number of times. Most recently, I thought I had left it in Philadelphia. I found it two days later in the bottom of my briefcase. On the widget is a variety of things both business and personal: a Quicken file with personal finances (encrypted), resume, remote access certificate for the office, pictures, etc. No customer data from the office, but the certificate could have been a problem. It's password protected, but within another 3-4 days, I was going to get my certificate revoked if I hadn't found it (I'm just that anal about it).

I expect that as more stories like the hospital become public, more of these flash drives will use encryption - which I'm starting to see in the marketplace, but not commonly yet. I would guess that within 12-24 more months, it will be standard. In the meantime, more letters like the one the hospital sent home will be happening.

Posted by Nemo at November 18, 2005 8:32 AM

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Comments

My Lexar JumpDrive has encryption capability; you decide how much you want encrypted and how much you want unencrypted. The down side is that a machine that doesn't have the JumpDrive software only sees the unencrypted part. Well, it sees both, but you can't decrypt the encrypted part without the driver. The generic USB storage drivers don't have the decryption capability built in (at least for now).

Posted by: Jeff Medcalf [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 18, 2005 9:41 AM