Manchester Council are the latest public body to fall victim to poor data protection, after two unencrypted laptops containing personal information on teachers and employees at local Manchester schools where stolen from Manchester City Hall. The ICO has forced the council to sign a promise step up their data protection policies in the future ensuring that all laptops and removable devices are encrypted.
This is just the latest occurrence of security breaches, with ICO figures showing 140 cases within the NHS and other health bodies, 53 involving the government, 60 by local authorities, 72 within quangos and 161 within the private sector.
With new technologies for encrypting and deleting data from mobile devices becoming more widely available there are no longer any excuses for sensitive data falling into the wrong hands, even when a laptop, PDA or mobile phone is stolen. It goes without saying that in addition to encryption and data deletion services if you haven’t got secure offsite backup then there is also going to be a significant disruption whilst you try to piece back together any lost data.
By implementating an online backup solution, Backup Technology could have restored the files within hours of the laptop being stolen, through secure encrypted channels.
