The U.S. Veterans Affairs Department used to suffer regular
data breaches but now deals with relatively few as a result of greater efforts to protect information.
The VA must issue monthly reports on the amount of data breaches it suffers and now deals with a far smaller number of them than it had in the past, according to the latest Monthly Report to Congress of Data Incidents from the department's
Office of Information Technology. For instance, nearly all the incidents it suffered between June 4 and July 1 were related to mishandled paper documents, such as mailings that went to the wrong person.
Further, of the 13 laptops stolen from or reported missing by the VA, all of them were encrypted, the report said. The agency also suffered 20 lost BlackBerry devices and five lost PCs.
Ondrej Krehel, the chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, writes regularly about the dangers data breaches pose, and what both consumers and organizations can do to prevent these incidents, as well as protect themselves when they do.
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