Secure USB Drive

A UK local council has lost the personal details of hundreds of residents when a memory stick fell out of an employee’s pocket. Details lost include names, addresses, national insurance numbers, ethnicity and more.

As a result, a director of the council has notified all council employees of a complete ban on the use of USB flash drives until a permanent solution is found. According to reports, the council is to implement a complete data security policy, which will see all laptops locked with passwords and all removable media encrypted.

It’s a wise precaution to have an amnesty on the use of unauthorized drives, before issuing the appropriate staff with encrypted flash drives – which was the approach taken by healthcare organization NHS Dumfries and Galloway in 2009.