North Yorkshire County Council loses seven laptops (From York Press)

North Yorkshire County Council loses seven laptops

8:10am Tuesday 23rd December 2008 in News By Nicola Fifield, Senior reporter

Steve Shaw-Wright

COMPUTER security has come under scrutiny at North Yorkshire County Council following the theft or loss of seven laptops in the past 12 months.

Council bosses said five of the devices were fully encrypted, while the other two contained no sensitive or personal data.

Two fully-encrypted BlackBerry personal digital devices have also gone missing since December 2007, along with at least 35 mobile phones.

Meanwhile, council bosses were unable to say how many data memory sticks had been lost or stolen because they did not know how many they had in the first place.

County councillor Steve Shaw-Wright said he was shocked by the revelations and called for tighter computer security measures.

He said: “This is an incredible amount of potentially sensitive information that has been lost and I think we should be more concerned about what has happened.

“The remit covered by the county council is enormous – social services, for example, will have a mass of information about vulnerable people and children at risk.

“For them to say it’s okay because the data lost is not sensitive, or it’s fully encrypted is not good enough – if a laptop is stolen with lots of names and addresses on and it gets into the hands of a conman, then that is serious.”

He said he was also concerned by the cost to the taxpayer.

“The amount of mobile phones council officers are losing seems to be extremely irresponsible,” he said.

“BlackBerrys are very expensive and only fairly senior officers are given them.

“Every time one is lost, it is the tax payer that will be shelling out as insurance premiums go up.”

A county council spokeswoman said it was investing hundreds of thousands of pounds to secure stronger protection against data loss.

Between January and April next year, nearly 2,000 laptops will be recalled to strengthen their encryption according to the latest standard.

Asset tracking will also be carried out and the encryption of USB data sticks and CD and DVD writers will be updated.

The spokeswoman said: “These additional controls will significantly reduce the exposure of the county council and provide greater facilities for central control, monitoring and policing, ensuring that data loss is further reduced.”