Bandwagon ho!

Yesterday I wrote an article on how a laptop was stolen from a Nottinghamshire hospital's offices, containing the details of thousands of kiddies and protected with nothing more than a single password.

Now, anyone who's ever used a computer outside of their home should know that one password doth not comprehensive security make, but that didn't stop a volley of security companies emailing us to point this out. In the article, I detailed the responses from SafeNet, GuardianEdge and PGP, but another one also came in after publication, from DigitalPersona.

Vice-pres George Skaff tells us that "all organisations need to wake up to the importance of protecting sensitive information by realising there is a need to use authentication techniques beyond that of a basic password which is simple to forget, easy to lose, or fall into the hands of the wrong person - knowingly or unknowingly... The cost to organisations of protecting themselves against the basic problems of password vulnerability, in relation to the cost to people involved if there is a security breach, is very small".

Thanks George (and Gary, Lynton and Jamie from the other three companies). Good job no-one ever accused security firms of being opportunistic.