Secure USB Drive

Last week’s episode of the British satirical comedy, The Thick of It, showed how the concept of a major public-sector data loss has become so mainstream that it can be the subject of an entire programme.

The story was based around the accidental wiping of a large volume of citizen data within a Government department, with no backup available, and follows the frantic efforts of the department to stop the news leaking to the press.

An ironic twist was that at the end of the episode, after the data loss had been made public knowledge, a USB flash drive containing a copy of the data was found at the bottom of a member of staff’s briefcase.  The drive was ordered to be destroyed, because it was felt that finding it after already admitting the data loss, would simply make the department look even more foolish than before.

Even 2 years ago, it would have been hard to imagine that this idea could have driven an entire episode of a TV series.  The fact it was completely believable shows just how data loss is a fact of life.