Major UK Gov't Data loss

[David Farber <dfarber () cs cmu edu>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Paul Davey <ip () pdc co uk>
Date: November 20, 2007 3:31:29 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Subject: For IP: Major UK Gov't Data loss

All over the UK Media - but seemingly of limited general international  
interest - but IP readers may be a special case!
(top story on BBC UK home page, but not on the World version)

Apparently the UK tax office has lost two disks (CD/DVD?) of 25  
million "Child Benefit" users - names, DOBs and for many families bank  
account details. In short the works. (Out of a UK population of ~60  
million this is pretty impressive.)

As Child Benefit is a universal (non means-tested) benefit (in the  
form of a cash refund for families with children) this means virtually  
UK family with school age children is at risk.

Two password-protected discs CDROMs were apparently lost in the  
internal "grid" mail (ie what seems to be the reusable internal mail  
envelopes used by many enterprises)

Seems to be yet another combination failure of legacy systems, human  
error in not following procedure(s) and some bad luck.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7103566.stm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/20/hmrc_huge_data_loss/

kind regards
 Paul



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