MoD technology confessions highlight data-loss risks By Tim in Security
You might have hoped that being in the business of securing our country, those civil servants working at the Ministry of Defence might be a bit more careful with electronic data than other departments we have read about in recent years.
Not so, according to the responses to a Freedom of Information Act requests from Lewis PR. It appears that the Ministry of Defence have lost 340 laptops in the last couple of years and more than half of those were unencrypted, possibly putting highly sensitive information at risk of falling into the wrong hands. It wasn’t just laptops either. DVDs, discs and 215 memory sticks were also reported missing.
But the MoD was not alone and of the 11 government departments questioned there was a total reported loss of 518 laptops, 131 BlackBerrys/iPhones, 104 mobile devices and 932 memory devices. All told the lost equipment represented an estimated loss to the taxpayer of £777,854.29.
There are perhaps three matters arising from the findings:
Firstly, with public sector cuts hitting hard, such losses are something easily eradicated and easy costs to save.
Secondly, it shows how easy human error can be in losing or misplacing equipment – even for those dealing in national security every day.
Finally, in the modern age of wireless and portable secure connections there really isn’t any need for sensitive information to be carried away from site. Such files can easily be worked on remotely over a secure VPN connection, thus eradicating the potential loss of sensitive data.
What’s your company policy on sensitive files?
