The Department of Veterans Affairs has had a miserable time with data breaches. For example, service personnel data have been breached. Doctors’ information has been breached. And now, a staggering amount of computer equipment is missing:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — More than a quarter of the computer equipment at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington could not be found by investigators, government auditors reported Tuesday.

Three other VA facilities showed slightly better results but still could not locate between 6 percent and 11 percent of their equipment, including computers, hard drives, monitors and other devices. In all, the four facilities audited by the Government Accountability Office reported more than 2,400 missing items originally worth $6.4 million.”

Link: Auditors can’t locate VA computer equipment

Perhaps in terms of government budgets, a million dollars here and a million dollars there doesn’t matter much. However, the $6.4 million dollar figure is just for four facilities. What would the figure be if the whole Department of Veterans Affairs network was audited? Project this figure for four facilities upon the network and the dollar figure would be staggering.

What happens to all this computer equipment? - If this is how computer equipment is handled, what security is afforded to the sensitive data contained on those hard drives? These are your tax dollars vanishing…

Catherine Forsythe

[tags]computer equipment, audit, department of veterans affairs, security, tax dollars[/tags]