Big news this year was the LimeWire privacy scandal caused by an investment firm employee. By using LimeWire in a careless manner on company computers, he exposed the company to a major security breach. This security breach caused controversy and compromised company data.

The most tangible effect leaving this “window” to the internet open while he downloaded files off of LimeWire was the loss of over 2,000 personal records form the company. By allowing the company computers to be open for viewing he made clients and corporate identity theft possible.

Names, addresses, investment information, bank accounts, social security numbers and more were all right there for the picking. Among the 2,000 unlucky enough to be victims of the theft was United States Supreme Court Justice Steven G. Breyer. The confidential files were left open to theft for a whopping six months.

The investment firm McLean is not the first high profile instance of identity theft. Walter Reed Army Medical Center was the victim of a similar breach recently that cost them 1,000 patient records, and Pfizer admitted to having a breach that may have compromised as many as 17,000. These breaches are becoming more and more common as P2P software gets easier to use.

Why do I think ease of use has something to do with the identity theft and compromised records of people up to and including a Supreme Court Judge? Because the easier something is to use, the more likely people are to use it without taking extra precautions. Add in the fact that there are few tutorials on the subject of “safe” peer to peer sharing, and you see why a layperson might get in trouble.

The best way to fight the issues in an office setting is to teach your employees the right and wring way to use peer to peer networking, and how to follow a few simple legal pointers. Of course, if you are more paranoid than that, you can block access to the P2P networks altogether, but that would make it harder to share files, causing a bit of a quandary.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 4:00 am under Uncategorized.

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