More thoughts, inspired by the data loss at the VA

VA conducts security review of laptop PCs, bars nondepartment PCs from VPN BY Bob Brewin Published on June 8, 2006 The Veterans Affairs Department has ordered a security review of every laptop computer at the VA and has banned employees from connecting any employee-owned computers to the VA virtual private network (VPN), VA Secretary James Nicholson said in a hearing at the House Committee of Government Reform today. [Federal Computer Week]

As I was theorizing yesterday, this is one way to solve the problem, but it is hardly the best and is probably the most knee-jerk that could have been taken. The VA will now have to come up with literally thousands of laptops for the employees that have been doing work from home for the myriad reasons that employees have to work from home. Add to that the push from people like Tom Davis in Congress who are bashing federal agencies for not having enough people teleworking. This sort of decision is going to make it very hard to implement any sort of telework at the VA for years to come. Let us all hope that there are no real pandemics on the horizon, or, for that matter, any continuity of operations issues that have to be addressed.