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Armed Forces Personnel Data Missing (From The Scotsman)
LONDON (Reuters) - The Ministry of Defence said on Friday it was investigating the loss of a portable hard drive used for storing personal information of armed forces staff.
The drive contained the private details of 100,000 Army, Navy and Royal Air Force personnel — around half the armed forces — the Sun said.
This no longer counts as ignorance or inexperience any more. The repeated loss of data by government has reached a point where it comes down to a wilful disregard for proper procedures with regards to data. The lessons about data management aren’t complicated: Don’t have data lying around. If you must transport it, encrypt it, and send it electronically or by courier.
The government said months ago that it would get to grips with this issue and it has done nothing. They know what the problem is, and yet have done nothing to make sure that their staff and suppliers are addressing it.
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I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Tim
In each such data loss case recently, there is a ‘private’ firm involved. In this case, I think it is EDS. It was PA Consulting in the last incident.
So the fault lies in the cracks between two parties - the government, who relies too much on service providers like EDS etc and the service providers such as EDS who are flagrant about protecting actual data.
It is worth asking why is such data being stored on ‘portable’ drives in the first place, no?