Ico underlines importance of encryption after data loss

ICO Underlines Importance Of Encryption After Data Loss

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The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has reiterated the importance of encrypting sensitive data or finding another way to store it altogether after news of a data breach at a local authority emerged.

North East Lincolnshire Council had stored the details of 286 children with special needs on a memory stick, which was being used by a teacher.

The member of staff left the solid-state drive (SSD) in the USB slot of a laptop at the council's offices while she went to run other errands in July 2011. When she returned, the SSD had gone.

It has never been recovered, meaning information about the children's health problems, dates of birth and home life could have fallen into anyone's hands.

The ICO carried out an investigation and found the council's data protection policies to be lacking. It imposed a fine of £80,000 and said this should act as a warning to any other business that deals with personal information.

"Organisations must recognise that sensitive personal data stored on laptops, memory sticks and other portable devices must be encrypted," added ICO head of enforcement Stephen Eckersley.

Council chief executive Tony Hunter added: "This data loss should not have happened and we took immediate steps to try to ensure it does not happen again."

However, SSDs may not be the best method for storing information even with up-to-date encryption in place. A study at the University of Ohio and HP Labs found that when they were subjected to common situations including power loss, 13 out of 15 suffered failure such as bit and metadata corruption, while others lost data completely.

Businesses relying on them may therefore be taking a huge risk and could find they are better off using third party data storage providers that keep documents safely in the cloud.

To find out more information on data storage and protection without relying on SSDs, give Storetec a call today.

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