28 February 2008

‘Highly confidential’ Home Office laptop sold on eBay

Eleanor Dallaway

Police are investigating a possible Home Office security breach after the discovery of an encrypted laptop containing a scrambled disc with the words ‘Home Office, highly confidential’ written on it. The laptop was found in a computer shop near Bolton, after a customer had taken it in for repair. The laptop was said to have been brought on eBay.

The potentially highly confidential government data disc, which was found hidden in between the keyboard and the circuit board of the laptop, was encrypted, and is now being held by police.

Home Office officials have denied it is another data blunder by the government.  “It could have been an ex-employee of the Home Office. It was four of five years old and it was encrypted” said one official.  “Both the laptop and the disk were encrypted, thus safeguarding any information that might be stored on them”, a Home Office spokeswoman said. “There is no suggestion that it contains anything interesting on it”.

Alan Bentley, VP of Lumension Security EMEA, comments, “The good news with this latest data breach is that the data was encrypted. However, encryption alone is not infallible – computer hackers are determined individuals with the potential to crack one layer of security. We certainly shouldn’t be relying on one line of protection when it comes to our national security”.

This incident follows a number of embarrassing information security breaches by government departments in recent months. “Isn’t it time for businesses and government to take common sense steps to protect critical information?” Mark Murtagh, technical director of Websense asks.

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