An employee working for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) had her PDA stolen while she was rescuing a cat stuck in a tree. The moral to this story is: thieves will steal stuff from your car, assuming there is something to steal from your car. Ensure you're protected by following basic security steps such as locking doors and employing drive encryption software like AlertBoot where and when necessary.
According to the RSPCA inspector who was robbed, I was literally 30ft away from my van when it happened, but of course my attention was focused on the cat we were busy rescuing. It's shocking that someone would steal from a van clearly labelled [sic] with the name of a charity. [menmedia.co.uk] This must be the lady's first contact with the criminal underworld because, I can assure you, thieves don't care who they're stealing from. That's why they're thieves. (Thieves stealing from charities is neither unusual or surprising. Why would it be? It's obvious that they don't follow common moral, ethical, or legal guidelines.) Personally, my first reaction after reading the quoted portion was, "was she rescuing a cat in Sherwood forest? What did she think thieves do?" I'm incredulous that she's shocked. Anyhow, returning to the story at hand: there's video footage of a pedestrian wandering along, checking out the commotion, etc. As he approaches the vehicles (it looks like the footage is from the rear camera of a fire truck), he must have noticed that no one was tending after the vehicles. He checks to make sure that no one is nearby, opens the RSPCA vehicle's door, appears to rummage through something, and runs like he's trying to win a slot at the 2012 London Olympics because the guy can run. The bag contained a PDA which was protected with a password and has been remotely locked after the incident.
According to the RSPCA inspector who was robbed,
I was literally 30ft away from my van when it happened, but of course my attention was focused on the cat we were busy rescuing. It's shocking that someone would steal from a van clearly labelled [sic] with the name of a charity. [menmedia.co.uk]
This must be the lady's first contact with the criminal underworld because, I can assure you, thieves don't care who they're stealing from. That's why they're thieves. (Thieves stealing from charities is neither unusual or surprising. Why would it be? It's obvious that they don't follow common moral, ethical, or legal guidelines.)
Personally, my first reaction after reading the quoted portion was, "was she rescuing a cat in Sherwood forest? What did she think thieves do?" I'm incredulous that she's shocked.
Anyhow, returning to the story at hand: there's video footage of a pedestrian wandering along, checking out the commotion, etc. As he approaches the vehicles (it looks like the footage is from the rear camera of a fire truck), he must have noticed that no one was tending after the vehicles. He checks to make sure that no one is nearby, opens the RSPCA vehicle's door, appears to rummage through something, and runs like he's trying to win a slot at the 2012 London Olympics because the guy can run.
The bag contained a PDA which was protected with a password and has been remotely locked after the incident.
The RSPCA inspector was literally 30 feet away from her car when her PDA was stolen. It goes without saying that the crime wouldn't have occurred if the inspector had locked her vehicle's doors. Under the circumstances, the thief would have tried the car's doors and, finding they were locked, would have slinked away. With multiple witnesses only 30 feet away, there is no way he would have risked breaking something and making a noise. The story is pretty illustrative of how things can go wrong in a very short time, and how a data breach can literally come down the street, and bite you in the butt. Had the inspector also carried a laptop as part of her duties, there's a good chance that the incident could have triggered a data breach. It's incidents like these clearly highlight why (1) attention needs to be paid to physical security, regardless of where you might be, and for what purposes, and (2) the value of data protection tools like encryption software. The first is used to minimize the loss of hardware and data. The second is used to prevent a data breach which, in this day and age, tends to cost more regardless of which parameters you use to measure
The RSPCA inspector was literally 30 feet away from her car when her PDA was stolen. It goes without saying that the crime wouldn't have occurred if the inspector had locked her vehicle's doors.
Under the circumstances, the thief would have tried the car's doors and, finding they were locked, would have slinked away. With multiple witnesses only 30 feet away, there is no way he would have risked breaking something and making a noise.
The story is pretty illustrative of how things can go wrong in a very short time, and how a data breach can literally come down the street, and bite you in the butt. Had the inspector also carried a laptop as part of her duties, there's a good chance that the incident could have triggered a data breach.
It's incidents like these clearly highlight why (1) attention needs to be paid to physical security, regardless of where you might be, and for what purposes, and (2) the value of data protection tools like encryption software. The first is used to minimize the loss of hardware and data. The second is used to prevent a data breach which, in this day and age, tends to cost more regardless of which parameters you use to measure
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