Since the theft of a disk containing names, social security numbers, and birth dates for more than 26 million veterans from the home of a Veterans Affairs data analyst was made public last week, the outcry over the agency's failure to guard the privacy of what are effectively its most valued customers has continued non-stop. VA Inspector General George Opfer confessed at a Senate hearing last week that supervisors of the VA data analyst were unaware the employee had the file containing the veterans' personal identifying information in his possession. Last week, I railed against the lack of plain old common sense with regard to data privacy and physical security. And though I find myself still confounded by this incident, I think there are some good lessons that can be learned by all of us - both from the perspective of protecting customer information and guarding our own data as consumers.
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