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. Read More »

In one of the UK’s biggest public-sector data leaks of 2008, the Home Office lost the details of all of the prisoners in UK jails.  The data was on an unsecured USB flash drive that was lost by contractor PA Consulting, as we’ve discussed on this blog earlier this year.

There’s now been a major new development on this data loss.  According to the Government department’s newly released Resource Accounts for 2008-09 (PDF at link), the USB memory stick contained more than just prisoner data.  It also had UK Police National Computer information, making a total of 377,000 records, 250,000 more than originally reported.

As mentioned previously, after the original data breach, the Home Office terminated its contract with PA Consulting, and carried out “a full review of the system and procedures” that led to the breach. 

This example shows just how serious the fall-out can be from a single lost device.  All the more reason to remove the risk of data loss entirely, by using secure USB flash drives.