DISCS GO MISSING: 25 million child benefit records lost…
November 22, 2007 | 8:51 amBBC writes: “Two computer discs holding the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 have gone missing.”
“The chancellor blamed mistakes by junior officials at HMRC, who he said had ignored security procedures when they sent information to the National Audit Office (NAO) for auditing. Mr Darling told MPs: “Two password protected discs containing a full copy of HMRC’s entire data in relation to the payment of child benefit was sent to the NAO, by HMRC’s internal post system operated by the courier TNT. The package was not recorded or registered. It appears the data has failed to reach the addressee in the NAO.”
Well, this at least shows why the security procedures were there in the first place. I wonder what kind of password protection the disks have. It’s probably a fancy way of saying it wasn’t encrypted.If they would have just used a TrueCrypt volume on the CD’s, there would not be a problem, and the CEO wouldn’t have had to resign.





