Terabyte of unencrypted US National Archives data goes missing

The drive is said to contain US government procedures and employee data from the Clinton era – with Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House procedures – and went missing during building works. Secure data storage specialist Origin Storage, for example, says it's "really bad news on the national security front," but asks how such sensitive data could be left unencrypted. Says Origin managing director Andy Cordial: "What I find astonishing about this incident is that the drive did not have any form of encryption, despite the fact that it contained highly sensitive data from the former president's administration." Cordial makes the point that the cost of encryption technology on hard drives has fallen significantly in recent times, "so there really is no excuse for the IT managers at the US National Archives for not implementing this technology on a pan-archive basis". He reckons that users can stroll into a local computer store and buy a terabyte of external storage for their PCs. Even with value-added features, such as network and on-the-fly integral encryption, he adds, the cost will not sneak much past £200.