Local authorities lax on data security

Around 90 per cent of respondents to a survey of UK councils, London boroughs and police authorities do not have special procedures in place for protecting sensitive data, new research claims.

The findings come from BeCrypt's recent Public Sector Data Security Survey which investigated how public sector organisations approach requirements for mobile working and the resulting issues for data security.

Furthermore, only eight per cent of those local authorities interviewed have full disaster recovery plans.

The survey, conducted during August and September 2007, asked about disaster recovery plans in the event that employees may not able to get to work, how important mobile working is to the organisation, and data security for mobile devices.

It also included questions on the repercussions of data leakage and the use of USB devices.

Richard Brooks, director of sales in EMEA at BeCrypt, said: "The survey provided an extremely useful piece of quantifiable research to assess how public sector organisations approach the requirements and challenges for mobile working.

"The use of laptops and removable media pose an increasing risk to data security, but the survey found that 30 per cent of councils have no policy regarding the use of USB devices and the inadvertent or malicious threat of data leakage.

"It is evident that such organisations not only require a security policy, but encryption solutions that enable it to be implemented."