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Posts Tagged ‘Compact Disc’

Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust looses patient records

August 26th, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

Yet another NHS Trust has been found in breach of the Data Protection Act (DPA) after it lost sensitive patient records stored on an unencrypted CD.

Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the data security watchdog explained that the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust lost a CD containing over 100 records from the Intensive Care Unit of New Cross Hospital’s Heart and Lung Unit.

The lost CD which was unencrypted with no password protection was later found at a bus stop near the hospital. “The fact that this information was several years old is of no consequence – patients’ personal data should always be handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act,” said Mick Gorrill, head of enforcement at the ICO. “I am pleased that the Trust has agreed to take remedial steps to ensure such an incident does not happen again,” he added.

The trust and ICO have been unable to determine how or why the CD was made. The Trust has agreed to sign a formal undertaking with the ICO to ensure similar incidents do not occur in the future. This will involve better staff training in data protection and ensuring patient charts released to consultants are signed for and chased up for return every week.

Though the matter has been put to rest now, security vendors have a different take on the incident altogether. Mark Fullbrook, UK and Ireland director at Cyber-Ark, argued that it is lucky to have escaped without a fine.

“What’s particularly disappointing in this case is that, with so many better-enabled devices and means of storing information, should this highly sensitive information have really been held and transported by CD?” he added. “The Trust couldn’t even explain how and why an unprotected CD with patient records was produced in the first place.”

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Posted in laptop theft

Tags: Compact Disc data protection act Data Protection Act 1998 data security DVD Gramophone record Information Commissioners Office London New Cross Hospital NHS Trust Personal computer Phonograph Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust security

Ministry of Defence has lost 1000 Laptops in 6 Years

July 24th, 2010

: Image via Wikipedia

As per the new statistics, the Ministry of Defence has lost or has overseen the theft of over 1000 computer laptops in the last ‘6′ years according to the new figures.

According to the latest update, the 11 Whitehall departments were the worst sufferers and have seen the loss of ‘340′ laptops which have accounted to losses over £600,000. These figures are in addition to the data lost from 2004 to 2008 which showed that the MoD had reported around 747 lost/stolen laptops which brings the total number of stolen laptops in the past six years to 1087. Due to this the cost to the taxpayer is more than £1 million.

Sir Edmund Burton has strongly criticized the department in a report prepared in June 2008. At that time, a Royal Navy laptop containing records of 600,000 recruits and potential recruits to the armed forces was stolen.

Out of the ‘340′ laptops lost in the last 2 years, the MoD department has revealed that 120 laptops were stolen and 220 were lost. Only 25 laptops were recovered. In addition, there were 593 CDs, DVDs and floppy disks, 96 hard-disk drives, 215 USB memory sticks and 13 mobile phones which went missing. Out of these, laptop encryption software was present on 157 laptops.

The monetary value of these storage and removable media devices like CDs, DVDs, floppy disks etc. has been estimated at £620,193. Out of these only £45,804 of equipments have been recovered. » Read more: Ministry of Defence has lost 1000 Laptops in 6 Years

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Absolute Software Compact Disc Data storage device Department for Work and Pensions DVD Electronics Floppy disk Freedom of information legislation Hard disk drive IPhone Ministry of Defence Royal Navy security

Data Breach Incident at HMRC

May 27th, 2010

HMRC London Office

HM Revenues & Customs, a government department has apologized to the eligible tax credit claimants for a serious data breach incident due to which personal information of over 50,000 people was exposed.The story was first broken over by The Register as they received a tip from one of their readers. Apparently, the reader had received a tax credit notice that contained details of two other recipients’ work, childcare and pay details.

In response, Paul Gerrard, the director of tax credits at HMRC, apologised for the error. HMRC issued a response which said, “HMRC takes data security extremely seriously. Unfortunately an error has occurred in one of the tax credits print runs causing some customer information to be wrongly formatted. Investigations are underway to identify the cause of the problem and we will be contacting affected customers in writing this week, apologising and providing a corrected award notice. An initial analysis shows that ID theft could not result from this printing error.”

While the number of tax credit notices dispatched are not exactly clear, it is believed that around 50,000 tax credit notices were dispatched.

Owen Roberts from Callcreditcheck.com (an organization monitoring customer accounts for ID fraud) mentioned, “HMRC’s claim that this isn’t enough to commit ID fraud is only half-true. It could be enough for the beginnings of a path to fraud, or the icing on the cake for a potential fraudster.”

In a similar incident two-and-half years ago, the confidential details of 25 million Child Benefit claimants were burnt on two unencrypted CDs and popped in post. Infact last year, the department at HMRC had also indicated good progress in removing the ability to transfer data to USB sticks and CDs with the exception of compelling business cases.

Many people are of the opinion that printing was outsourced to some third party company who were expected to do a proper job but instead they messed up the situation.

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