Today, a new series of PQs shows that they’re heading for 45 devices lost this year alone.  That’s almost one a week.  That’s bad.

What’s worse, though, is that, despite the repeated losses of personal information all year, neither the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources nor the Department of Education & Science have introduced any whole disk encryption solutions.

Ruairi Quinn:

Ruairi Quinn TD (with Pat Rabbitte TD)

It beggars belief that the Department of Communications, tasked with developing our country’s IT infrastructure, has absolutely no policy on securing IT devices.

I wouldn’t even allow my personal laptop go out and about without Truecrypt encryption.  Why are two Government departments so closely associated with technology allowing my data to be left on buses and stolen from cars without any protection?  Especially when there’s little or no cost (Truecrypt is free).

What are Ministers Eamon Ryan and Batt O’Keeffe up to that they’ve missed the news all year?

By the way, if you think you can spot my fingerprints all over this, yes I did write the original PQs and this week’s followup PQs.  I wrote the Januar press release, but not this month’s one.

Update:

Mulley has a list of the actual responses.