Stolen data tape: kept with interns for years

I’ve gotten an answer to yesterday’s question on the stolen data tape: when did the policy of sending data home with employees interns begin?

A state office had been sending backup data tapes home with interns for two or three years before a tape with sensitive information was stolen from an intern’s car last week, The Dispatch has learned.

In fact, it appears that the former technical manager for the Ohio Administrative Knowledge System didn’t use regular state employees — only two or three interns besides himself — to take the data home on a rotating basis for safekeeping, said Ron Sylvester, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Administrative Services.

“On its face, with what we know today, this seems like a questionable decision,” Sylvester said.

State Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark, was more blunt.

“Not since Monica Lewinsky have we seen an intern with such access,” Hottinger said yesterday after voting with the rest of the state Controlling Board to spend more than $700,000 to deal with the fallout so far from the June 10 theft of the backup tape.

The manager, Carl Miller, retired May 31, Sylvester said. Miller, who records show was hired by the state in 1977 and earned $116,063 last year, couldn’t be reached. His pay worked out to $54.10 an hour; the intern made $10.50.

Thank you, Dispatch. This incident has little to do directly with either Ted Strickland or the Democrats. See also this post from yesterday from NixGuy.

We’ve also got this news from NBC4i:

Ohio’s $700,000 response to the theft of a sensitive state computer backup tape from the car of an intern would have been unnecessary had the information been encrypted, a relatively inexpensive process growing more common in the world of information technology, experts said Monday.

I hope that not all of these expensive experts’ advice is not that bleedin’ obvious.