Data missing at the National Archives - $50,000 USD reward offered

by Steve Ragan - May 21 2009, 17:35

The National Archives has released an official timeline and other information after it disclosed that it lost an external hard drive, which held information from the Clinton Administration.

The drive, a 2TB Western Digital MyBook, held the names and Social Security numbers, as well as other information, for former Clinton staff and White House visitors. There is a $50,000 USD reward for information leading to the return of the drive.

While the original records have been lost, the National Archives has said it is in possession of the original tapes and a back-up hard drive. According to the timeline, the missing drive was last seen between October of 2008 and the first week of February 2009, and was discovered missing in March of 2009, when staffers were resuming an analysis project connected to the drive.

Unsure as to if the drive “was stolen, lost, or otherwise misplaced,” the National Archives is offering up a $50,000 USD reward to anyone who can help recover it.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to learn that the drive was thrown out with the trash? Or perhaps it will simply appear again like the missing laptop from the TSA. One thing is certain, anyone attempting to sell a 2TB drive on eBay might get government bidders -- which is worth bearing in mind, just in case the drive finds itself offered there.

Phil Lieberman of Lieberman Software has an interesting take on the topic, outlining that: “Somebody needed/wanted a hard disk, and no doubt, someone saw a cool 2TB drive and decided to take it home to hold their music and pictures. Or, perhaps it was re-tasked to another archiving project.”

Yet, if it was taken by someone who simply wanted an old drive that was sitting around, then this is nothing new, it happens every day in the private sector, Lieberman pointed out.

The bottom line, according to Lieberman, is that “too many people, have too much access, to too many systems, for too long... Unfortunately, even our software solutions cannot prevent someone from leaving a door open and giving a thief a chance.”

Yet Origin Storage, which is a data storage security vendor based in the U.K., said that the drive’s loss was staggering.

“The fact that the US National Archives' drive contained employee Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service plus White House operating procedures is really bad news on the national security front for the US government,” said Andy Cordial, Origin Storage's managing director.
 
“What I find astonishing about the incident is that the drive did not have any form of encryption, despite the fact it contained highly sensitive data from the former President's Administration,” he added.

According to Cordial, although the National Archives has a security system and strict security procedures in place, it would appear these procedures were not followed as building works were taking place at the Archives II facility in Maryland, which was opened in 1994. This, he says, is exactly the time when security procedures -- with a safety net of encrypting all data on relevant storage systems -- should have prevented this clear security policy snafu.
 
The cost of encryption technology on hard drives has fallen significantly in recent times, he explained, so there really is no excuse for the IT managers at the U.S. National Archives to have not implemented this technology on a per-archive basis.

This isn’t the first time a government agency has lost important data, and it will not be the last. The question is, with all the talk about cybersecurity and government management of such security initiatives, what can be done regarding incidents such as this one?

Sure, beefing up the national security and IT infrastructure is an awesome thing. However, if a drive containing the information on those upgrades should be lost, how valuable are they then?

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