A Ministry of Justice investigation has found that EDS had lost data on prison staff twelve months before noticing the breach.
According to Jack Straw, Justice Minister, the HP subsidiary will undergo an annual audit of its security and pay the cost arising from the loss which also includes retraining.
The Ministry’s investigation into the data breach that was announced in September revealed that the incident could affect nearly 5,000 staff as the hard drive contained “256 items of sensitive personal information” which has the potential to cause a lot of damage if leaked. The data included information like addresses, dates of birth, bank details and national insurance numbers.
Straw also added that there was no indication that the information has entered the public domain. Investigations revealed that data was downloaded to a hard drive as a part of data recovery exercise in July 2007. The disk was not cleaned before it was taken out from the site.
Online data storage protects information from leaking by limiting the access. Online data storage also makes the use of traditional storage devices like CDs, DVDs etc redundant and hence reduces the chances of data theft or loss. Companies and government organisations should use the best available technology to secure their data.
