There are agenies that are put in place to protect the people. In certain instances those agencies are set against the people *cough* NSA *cough*. But now we find out that one such ageny has managed to endanger its people through incompetence. The financial details of some 3,500 Australians have been leaked out by none other than the Australian High Tech Crime Centre via a misplaced USB stick.
Apart from obvious embarrassment, the loss also hindered the worldwide police investigation into Internet scams. As a result, several suspects were arrested in Australia, but others were still being hunted. Customers, whose data was lost in the bungle, were never told about the problem with their bank data. It is believed several banks, whose clients were affected, wanted to inform them, but the Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC) persuaded them not to publicise the loss. The AHTCC claimed it did not want criminals to be alerted as to the existence of the memory stick with such important data pertaining to the investigation on it.
There are ways to secure your systems from rogue USB devices but, in this incident it was a known device. The question here would be why was this data not encrypted??
[tags]Austrlian High Tech Crime Centre, AHTCC, USB Device, Data Security, Encryption[/tags]
