Information exposed!

OUR OPINION
Published: August 27, 2008

In the age of the Internet, nothing is safe. Just ask the 2,600 Prince William County students, employees and volunteers whose personal information was exposed by a file-sharing program for about five
weeks this summer.

The nuances and particulars of the Internet are such that it is becoming harder and harder to keep anything safe. The exposed information found its way to the public when a school employee was working
at home on a personal computer, using a file-sharing program.

The worst part about this situation is that Prince William County Schools did not discover that this personal information was at-risk. A security specialist, unrelated to the school system, noticed the
information and alerted school officials to the problem, at which point the information was secured.

We believe that the school system did the best it could in this situation. But for government organizations with access to the personal information of private citizens, sometimes their best is not good
enough.

We hope that the Prince William County School system uses this opportunity to explore ways to ensure that personal data remains secure.

Gone are the days when personal information resided solely in manila folders in a file cabinet somewhere. Today it is coded as 1s and 0s on a hard drive, easily transferrable from computer to computer,
and unfortunately, sometimes, able to be accessed by prying eyes.

As the ease of information transfer increases, so too must the vigilance to safeguard it. We count on Prince William County Schools to step up its efforts.