Sloppy IT security at NATO?

A man named Mr. K. is currently on trial in Germany accused of espionage and theft of government property.

He was a long time IT worker at the American air base in Ramstein, Germany, and was arrested earlier this year for taking classified documents.

Only now, during the trial, are we getting a fuller picture worth looking at. Mr. K. did not attempt to sell the documents he removed, he did not make a big effort to hide his tracks.

And, from the news reports, he had a long track record of complaining within the organization about sloppy security in "NATO IT". Details of what he took are sparse, reports mention only a few Excel spreadsheets that "should have been classified".

The defense team told the press that an expert had, in a session closed to the public, criticized IT security as "sloppy".

It is that characterization that made us consider a blog post.

As the great Winston Churchill said: "Behind every small time spy is a big time sloppy organization".

Of course, Sir Winston never said this, but the number of fake and merrily repeated Churchill quotes is so great that one more is fine.

We are, well, just a bit sloppy in the attribution.