How long does it take to report the theft of a laptop?  Well, if you’re a Comptroller and Auditor General at the Department of Social and Family Affairs office in Dublin, it takes you over a year to make such a report.  And this happens only because other people are snooping around and you decide to make it known before the media gets a hold of it.  Too late for that it seems.  Contained on the missing laptop was personal information of around 380,000 welfare recipients.  Around 100,000 of these records contained details about the financial accounts of the people and have the potential for large amounts of identity theft to take place now.

The Minister for the Department of Social and Family Affairs, Mary Hanafin, has expressed her disappointment in the Comptroller and stated that she will investigate the matter further to see what types of problems this delay in information has caused.  Over the next two weeks, the department will be contacting the 100,000 recipients whose files on the laptop contained financial information.  This contact will take place by telephone.  The other 280,000 affected individuals will receive a letter from the department informing them of steps they should take to ensure that their private information has not been used for fraudulent means.

The information on the laptop was password protected, but not encrypted.  As a result of this revelation, the department is taking steps to ensure that all laptops and desktop computers have encrypted and password protected files from here on out.  Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes said that all regulations regarding the electronic storage of files will be reviewed and efforts will be made to make sure that personal information is not stored on portable devices.  He also said that this is a serious breach and that he would continue to meet with the Comptroller, John Buckley, to further discuss his actions and what steps his office can take to prevent this type of problem in the future.

In a surprising revelation, it is being reported that since 1999, the Office of Comptroller and Auditor General has had sixteen laptops stolen.  This frequency is far and away higher than any other department in the government and an investigation is ongoing about these incidents.  For people who feel that their financial records have been fraudulent used, they can contact the Bank of Ireland and also use the hotline that was set up by the Department of Social and Family Affairs.

Ireland is not alone to this type of breach.  Such occurrences are frequent in the United States, which is why people are enrolling in ID theft subscription services.  One good company to consider is Lifelock.  This company has contacts with Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian where it monitors the credit activity of its customers.  Whenever a new loan or credit card application is submitted, Lifelock contacts its customer to determine the legitimacy of the forms.  If they are fraudulent, they are prevented from being processed.