Information Security Management Handbook, Volume 5, 6th Edition

494  ◾  Information Security Management Handbook

were all made aware of public incidents of laptop theft when news flashes alerted us to the missing

laptop from the Veterans Administration that supposedly contained personnel records of millions

of military veterans. A very similar incident was publicized when a laptop was stolen in early 2008

from the National Institutes of Health, which contained private medical information for nearly

2,000 people. In each of these cases and similar incidents around the globe it was unclear until

well after the fact as to how these thefts took place virtually unnoticed and in most cases the infor-

mation was not encrypted beyond password-protected access to the laptop itself.

If we were to apply a layered defens ...