SoylentNews

Appalbarry [soylentnews.org] writes:

Today it's 3+ million student records, plus associated sensitive and possibly embarrassing information, on an unencrypted hard-drive that has been lost by the government of British Columbia.

The media coverage, as usual, ranges from sensational to clueless, but this Globe and Mail story [theglobeandmail.com] sums things up pretty well.

Sensitive personal information about millions of students is at risk because British Columbia’s Ministry of Education has misplaced a hard drive containing documents that were stored without a fundamental safety measure: data encryption. ... The data was gathered in 2011 with good intentions. Files related to 3.4 million students and teachers who attended schools in B.C. and the Yukon between 1986 and 2009 were backed up onto two external hard drives to ensure that they would be preserved in case of a catastrophic failure of the central database.

The data is being described as including most BC residents between the ages of 22 and 47, and as well as school records, includes information about "psychological assessments, describing in-care status, substance abuse, family problems," as well as records of interactions with police.

Not to worry though! The minister responsible called the breach "low risk," and assures us that "there is no indication of fraud or identity theft as a result of the misplaced drive."

Original Submission