Thursday 11 December 2008

Personal data held by councils not encrypted

silicon.com reports that: "according to a study of 40 out of the 49 city councils in the [UK] carried out by systems integrator Telindus, [...] 90 per cent could not say for sure that all sensitive data held on staff laptops is encrypted."

One wonders first of all what these data are doing on laptops anyway. Given that there is a need, it is surprising that "43 per cent said they still have no plans to upgrade data protection policies".

An anonymous officer is quoted as saying: 'We use the 'cross your fingers and hope for the best' system."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's the situation in NPT then Frank?

Does this need to be scrutinised?

G Lewis
Ogmore Lib Dems

Frank Little said...

I have already emailed the corporate development section to suggest that now is a good time to review data security within the county borough.

I am sure that some of the cities surveyed by Telindus have smaller client databases than Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend and Vale of Glamorgan.