Friday, September 15, 2006

Contract Worker Arrested for Theft of Computer with Veteran's Personal Information

The computer stolen from Unysis containing the personal information of thousands of veterans has been recovered, and a suspect has been arrested.

Jonathan D. Silver, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting:

A Washington, D.C., man has been charged with stealing a computer containing personal data about thousands of Pittsburgh-area veterans from a private contractor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Khalil Abdullah-Raheem, 21, was charged Wednesday in federal court with theft of government property, the VA's Office of Inspector General announced yesterday.

Link to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story, here.

This development highlights the fact that when a security compromise occurs - it frequently comes from within an organization. When this occurs - it often doesn't matter how tight security procedures are - because the person had access to whatever was compromised.

For a previous post, I wrote about how the Secret Service is studying this problem, link here.

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