Secure USB Drive

There has been another local Government data leak in the UK, this time a City Council employee in Leeds, England lost an unsecured USB flash drive that contained in-depth personal details of 5,000 kindergarten-age children and their parents.  The data was not encrypted.

 The drive was handed to the police by a person that found it in a car he had just bought, which was formerly a taxi.  In this case it seems the data has been returned safely, but no-one can be certain the contents of the drive haven’t been viewed.

 After all, in April this year, SanDisk surveyed IT managers and end-users, and 12% of end users reported finding a USB flash drive in a public place. Whats more, 55% indicated they would try and view the data on it. So mandatory data encryption is a must-have for USB drives.

 As always, organisations should back up their policies by issuing secure USB drives with mandatory hardware encryption.