Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Disabled people's personal data stolen from Government Agency

According to a very short response from the DWP Minister, Anne McGuire, in the last 12 months, the Independent Living Fund, the agency that provides help to the severly disabled has had one backup tape of personal data stolen.

No further information was given, but assuming it's an industry standrard type tape, such as DLT8, that could, at least theoretically, represent about 40Gigs of personal data about a significant group of extremely vulnerable people.

Hopefully someone will follow up on this, as to lose a backup tape is bad enough, but if your information security procedures are so poor that tapes full of personal data can be lfited, what does that say about the multutde of other central database the Goevrnment has built, is building, or wishes too build?

3 comments:

Chris Paul said...

Was the tape lifted for itself? Or because it happened to be in a back up device?

dizzy said...

really don't know, look at the question. It's very specific and the answer is too. I'm guessing the person that asked it did so for a reason.

Mrs. McGuire: I have been advised by the trustees that in the last 12 months there has been one theft of an Independent Living Fund’s back up tape containing personal data.

Anonymous said...

Data is really important at least they should put some proper security check to avoid this in future... or they don't want to care this data as they don't care disabled people...