When I first read this story, the first thing I thought was, why does any laptop need to contain ALL 10,000 employees records? What makes matters worse is that the stolen laptop was not encrypted and merely was password protected. Gee, that should make it hard to crack. If the employee who took it home was dumb enough to leave it sitting unattended one could conclude they may also have a mediocre password.

A Home Depot rep. stated that the employee information contained home addresses and social security information as well as other personal data. Home Depot is going to provide one year of credit monitoring for those employees who’s information could of been compromised. Monitoring? How about picking up the tab if in fact an employee suffers a credit breach?

It still amazes me that any company would allow any portable device to contain this much information. I wonder if the employee who’s laptop was stolen would like his personal information plastered all over the Internet? It also makes one wonder how many other companies still allows this much info to be stored on their systems?

What do you think? Should companies be more accountable for protecting their data?

Comments welcome.

Tags: home depot, laptop, stolen, data, employees