1:19pm Tuesday 17th November 2009
By Alex Lewis
THE laptop which has gone missing from the district council offices with personal details of more than 14,000 people sat neglected on a desk for two months, according to an insider.
A council worker who does not want to be named told the Review: “That laptop was sitting on an untidy desk for two months.
"I thought nothing of it - it was an old laptop, not worth anything.
Now I realise it had all this data.
The rules are clear - if it had sensitive data it should have been under lock and key.”
Claiming that another employee had then left it on his desk for a further two weeks, he added: “It is just incompetence.
The council says there are two levels of security but there is no encryption software. Anybody could get through the Windows XP password.
It is true that nobody could see the full programme but they could certainly see the raw data."
District council spokeswoman Amanda Wilkinson said: “ Following the publication of security guidelines from Government Connect, the council has invested in encryption software which is being installed on all its laptops.
“As the guidelines relate to laptops that leave council buildings, priority has been given to these. The laptop containing the election data was used inside the council’s offices. The laptop was due to be upgraded with encryption software at the time of its disappearance.”
She said she could not comment further as the apparent theft was under police invesitigation.
Stephen Midgley, vice president of computer security company Absolute Software, told the Review: “ St Albans Council would have done well to ensure important data can self-destruct if a laptop gets stolen.
“This isn’t just a financial cost, it can also mean the time it will take to recreate the data or the impact on an organisation having to tell the residents that their confidential information has been compromised.”
“When a laptop is stolen there are a number of issues to bear in mind. First, the thief may only keep possession of it for a few hours, and second, the value of information on it is almost certainly greater than the value of the laptop itself, so action must be quick and decisive."
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