"MI5 laptop snatched"

[Ian G Batten]

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You write:
> The problem is that the business chaps understand the legal/financial
> liability that lies upon them and so takes measures to secure those keys

I beg to differ.  You're looking at things from the perspective of a
small to medium enterprise.  I've seen some horrors surrounding security
in telco environments, large manufacturing environments and so on, where
security is devolved as a purely rote function which is then pushed down
as a book of rules to be blindly followed.  A lot of corporate security
guidelines are followed without any understanding of their function,
either tactically (``why is it a bad idea to write your passwords
down'') or strategically (``why is it a bad idea to have random users
using your machines'').  We have endless trouble convincing users that
sharing passwords is a bad idea, for example.

> respective to that liability. If PC Plod then takes those keys, for
> which they have no liability, then they are not so motivated to
> implement appropriate security.

Does a random employee of a multi-national have the aforementioned
``motivation''?

> Cases like this do not suggest the entire physical security
> infrastructure of the intelligence services is rubbish, but it does
> little to inspire confidence.

Ask an IT manager how many laptops they lose a year.  They probably
won't tell you, but it won't be zero.

ian

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