Laptops & mobiles worth more than £240,000 have been lost or stolen from the BBC over the last two years, a Freedom of Information Act request from an IT security company has revealed.
The equipment stolen from BBC or lost during the period from April 2008 to March this year included 146 laptops, 65 mobile phones and 17 BlackBerrys. The value of the missing laptops has been estimated at £219,000, the mobile phones at £12,913 and the Blackberrys at £9,106, according to BBC reports.
This comes to a total of £241,019, or the equivalent of 1,656 colour TV licenses costing £145.50 each, although 9 equipments, worth £23,450 were recovered.
The F.o.I. request also revealed that a BBC employee was investigated over the theft of a laptop, but whether a disciplinary action was taken against that employee is still unclear as the corporation could not confirm it.
The General Manager of the IT security company said “it is shocking that any organization could lose so much equipment, but the BBC is just one of many we’ve seen recently, proving it’s all too common.
“In this case, however, this technology is paid for by the license payer and employees should be far more careful about how they handle it.”
A BBC spokeswoman added: “The BBC takes theft very seriously and has implemented a number of measures to reduce the level of crime.
“The portability of laptops and phones means that in any large organization there is an inevitable risk of theft.”
Moreover, with the devices, the invaluable data on them was also stolen. Sure, the hardware theft is covered by the insurance in most cases, but the data lost in the theft is almost never recovered.
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