Following the documented loss of 131 USB memory sticks from the UK Ministry of Defence since 2004 - as well as over 650 laptops! - there are calls for the devices to be banned from the workplace.

3 of the USB sticks this year alone held information classified as “secret”, with another 19 holding “restricted” data.

Previous information security breaches in British Government departments include:

* November 2007 - Revenue and Customs officials lost the personal details of 25 million people

* June 2008 - A computer was stolen from the office of

* January 2008 - The MoD revealed that one of its laptops - containing the details of 600,000 people - was stolen from a car

The British Governments plans for a National ID Database continue, however, despite continued failings with both internal policies and external contractors providing inaccurate services:

* The recent scandal over unmarked SATS exam papers for 11 year olds
* The ongoing and rarely fully reported embarrassment to the UK that is the National Project for Information Technology/Connecting for Health, an ill-conceived and poorly managed (at every level) attempt to get every UK citizen onto a national health database.

When will they learn?

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 1:06 pm and is filed under Storage and Drives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.