Are we looking after our mobile data carefully enough?
After the numerous issues with data security over the last 12 months, the BBC has reported that over 60,000 mobile devices have been left in the back of black taxis in the last 6 months, from mp3 players to laptops.
You would think that the recent high profile incidents would have alerted us all to the dangers of leaving these sorts of items for thieves, but it seems that the warnings have gone unheard. Although 80% of the taxi drivers claimed that the items were reunited with their owners, there were still 12,000 that were not, and this is just in London. How many others are being given into the hands of thieves across the country?
With mobile devices being capable of so much more than ever before, they often contain sensitive business and personal information, and can give thieves the tools to start accessing other confidential information and a whole lot more. We need to be more careful with the physical security of our mobile information devices, consider what sensitive information about us, our staff and our customers is being held on them, and how carefully it is protected.
We need to ask ourselves:
• Are we fully compliant with our obligations under the DPA, where mobile information is concerned?
• Is the information password protected or encrypted?
• Do the devices contain any sensitive information they don’t need to?
Otherwise, our confidential business and personal information could easily leak out into the public domain.
This entry was posted on Friday, September 19th, 2008 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Articles, Business Advice, Data Security, IT Advice . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
