I'm surprised that this can still happen when pretty much all companies have a policy of full-disk encrypting every laptop that leaves their buildings these days.
Still, this is meat-and-drink to the UK press. For instance, I saw very few headlines about this one.
http://www.computera...nce-service-999-dataI guess that "security policy saves the personal data of hundreds of thousands" is far less sexy than "people's surnames lost in definitely world-ending, total IT incompetence muck-up by complete idiots".