Jacqui Smith: moron or mendacious?
Jacqui ‘chins’ Smith on the loss of yet more sensitive data:
This was data that was being held in a secure form, but was downloaded onto a memory stick by an external contractor
BZZZZT! Wrong answer.
Memo to Ms Smith: If you have a system that allows some herbert to download information from it to a memory stick and then go out and lose said memory stick, THAT INFORMATION IS NOT IN A ‘SECURE FORM’. This system is, like so many, many others, is bollocks.
Is Smith ignorant or is she relying on the ignorance of the public here? I think probably both – Smith gives every impression of being genuinely witless on this matter and that, by lucky chance, allows her bad news masseurs to befuddle the ‘ee, I don’t understand computers, me’ public.
Posted on August 22nd, 2008 at 5:26pm under New Labour, Science and progress
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• 4 Comments |
Hmm. It’s possible that the consultants were less than truthful with the government about the secure-ness of their systems.
“It is forbidden under all circumstances to download any client-sensitive data onto external storage or work on any data on non-company machines” is a reasonably strong security policy – but it doesn’t mean a lot if the only time anyone gets into trouble for ignoring it is when breaking the rules results in a massive data breach.
john b’s latest blog post… Liberal-baiting
Well that’s the raw end of outsourcing/privatisation/throwing money at bastards, isn’t it. It’s out of the Government’s hands – although I’d love to see the contract and see how tightly this notoriously slapdash government nailed down the contractor over security issues.
But, whether its gas or water prices, lost data or whatever – the private companies can pretty much do what they like (it would seem) but it’s the government who take the flak and sink a little lower in the polls. It’s a fact of life and one I feel little sympathy for – this government particularly has a singular reluctance to accept or even acknowledge the rough as well as the smooth.
There are simple and not that expensive technical measures that could have been implemented to enforce that reasonably strong security policy, rather than having to rely on the goodwill of a person who seemingly lacks the simple ability to put a memory stick in a deep or zipped up pocket or wear it on a lanyard around their neck.
“I’d love to see the contract and see how tightly this notoriously slapdash government nailed down the contractor over security issues.”
Likewise.
“There are simple and not that expensive technical measures that could have been implemented to enforce that reasonably strong security policy”
Indeed. I work at a firm that does similar work to PA – our laptops have encrypted hard drives; they’re configured so that it’s impossible (or at least, would require you to do things that aren’t just careless rule-breaking but blatant gross misconduct) to download anything to a non-approved external drive; and our approved memory sticks are also encrypted and only work with the encrypted company laptops.
john b’s latest blog post… Mental anti-pie
I was amazed to find that it was possible to download information onto a memory stick. Ten years ago I worked for a company that was not that advanced on IT issues, but even they prevented people from downloading any data from the server. In fact you couldn’t even load anything onto your own PC, it all had to be done by the IT department. Miss Smith needs to get out more, or perhaps it would help if our ministers had some experience of something, before they started directing other organisations. Lets face it, this government placed an ex-seaman in charge ot ratansport and rural affairs and a postman in charge of health. No wonder we are in such a mess.