Wigan Council condemned for losing details on 43,000 students
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Wigan Council's loss of personal information on 43,000 students highlights the need for encryption and staff training, says Information Commissioner's Office.
Wigan Borough Council in Lancashire has been criticised by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after it revealed that a laptop stolen from a locked office contained the personal details of 43,000 school pupils.
The data had been downloaded to a laptop by a staff member, and was unencrypted.
The ICO’s head of enforcement, Sally-Anne Poole, said although the Council had a data protection policy prohibiting the transfer of sensitive information to mobile devices, there were no obstacles to prevent staff from doing so.
“This incident could have been averted if the data was simply accessed from the main council computer network,” she said. “Storing large volumes of personal information on portable devices is unnecessarily risky.”
Wigan Council’s chief executive Joyce Redfearn signed an undertaking to encrypt data on portable devices in the future, while staff would receive additional training.
Policies, policies, policies. We can have policies until they come out of our ears but until such time as people adhere to them and believe in following the set processes, nothing will change from a human perspective.
The one thing that is however more than capable of at least being able to restrict simple breaches such as the one at Wigan, is technology. If you deploy the correct technology then you are able to control the amount of data that can be downloaded to a PC or any portable device, or even control as to who has access to what.
Secondly, if you use technologies such as SSL VPN devices you can enable employees to access such data remotely as and when needed via a secure portal. It therefore avoids the need to have to download the data to a device that could potentially be compromised.
Ash Patel, country manager, UK & Ireland, Stonesoft
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