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UK government Laptop and USB Key security woes

by maleger | July 19, 2008 at 08:58 am | 176 views | 3 comments

Since 2004, the UK Ministry of Defence has lost track of 121 USB keys, 658 stolen laptop computers and 89 lost laptop computers. Of these, 32 laptops have been reported recovered. Of 26 USB keys lost so far this year, 5 contained Secret data and 19 contained Restricted data. This demonstrating that other national goverments are no better or worse that our Canadian government, as presented in Service Canada Loses Canadians' data.

A UK Member of Parliament, Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather said:

"This shows a shocking degree of incompetence."

According to UK Laws, individual officials responsible for such entirely avoidable losses of unencrypted classified data and documents are subject to military Courts Martial or criminal prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act 1989 section 8 Safeguarding of information. However, there seems to have been no such sanctions actually taken. So don't worry, be happy. If you work in the UK governement, or in Canada, nothing will happen to you if you loose sensitive data.

The BBC reported that this is the latest in a series of UK data loss incidents:

November 2007 - Revenue and Customs officials lost the personal details of 25 million people
June 2008 - A computer was stolen from the office of Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and files on counter-terrorism were left on a train
January 2008 - The MoD revealed that one of its laptops - containing the details of 600,000 people - was stolen from a car

Since publication, in June 2008 of a report on data losses by Sir Edmund Burton which found that MoD policies and procedures are generally fit for purpose, the UK Ministry of Defence has recalled 20,000 non-encrypted laptops and are now encrypting them.

References

GB: la perte de périphériques USB menace la sécurité

How many lost or stolen laptop computers or USB memory sticks etc

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7514281.stm

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jordan

at 09:48 on July 19th, 2008

good stuff:

Perhaps not allowing sensitive info to leave government offices... the data losses seem to occur when employees flake out and leave their laptops in their vehicles or on public transit. I wonder if we can use those cable thingies that they have at banks, except instead of tying down pens, we can tie down flash drives.

zichi

at 14:09 on July 19th, 2008

good stuff:

maleger, I like this story. It's good stuff.

maleger

at 04:27 on July 20th, 2008

What ever you do, humans will always be the weak link in any system. Information system, computer system or any type of system, it will always be the human that is the weak link. But unless we want a society that looks like the Terminator, 1984 (Orwell) or some other scienfiction like Brave new world (Huxley), we need humans.

Humans will be very inventive at finding some way to break or circumvent any device (or little chain) you put to stop them from loosing your USB key !