The Home Office broke data protection laws when a contractor lost a memory stick with information on thousands of prisoners, a watchdog has ruled. The Information Commissioner’s Office said the Home Office must also sign a formal undertaking to improve its procedures for protecting data. A PA Consulting employee left the stick in an unlocked…
Category: Lost or Missing
HK: Gov’t staffer might have left confidential data on bus
Hong Kong’s Food and Environmental Hygiene Department is following up on a possible case of confidential data leakage recently, according to a local media report. A person reported to the department that a USB thumb drive that stores internal guidance for the Hawker Control Teams of the department and personal information of some hawkers was…
UK: Security probe after data breach at prison
Aasma Day reports: A security probe has been launched after a memory stick containing details of more than 6,000 prisoners was lost – with the password attached to it. The USB data stick was lost by a health worker at Preston prison. All 6,360 patients are, or have been, a prisoner at Her Majesty’s Prison…
Pepsi employee data on missing storage device
On December 23rd, Pepsi Bottling Group notified the New Hampshire Attorney General that: During the week of December 8, the payroll department of The Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG) reported that it could not account for a portable data storage device, which contained unencrypted personal information, including the names and social security numbers of PBG employees…
Five recent Merrill Lynch security breaches you probably didn’t know about
As if the financial sector wasn’t in enough of tailspin recently, Merrill Lynch reported at least five security breaches during the last quarter of 2008. Reports filed by the firm with several states attorney general reveal that: On September 3, the company reported a lost laptop containing personally identifiable information to New York State. That…
Concern at 16 cases of lost Assembly data
Tom Bodden reports: THE Welsh Assembly Government has confirmed that 16 cases of official data have been lost or stolen in the last three years. Ten of the losses of material, classed as “medium to low risk”, took place this year, according to details released under the Freedom of Information Act. Missing information deemed “medium…