Local authorities ignore mobile data security

A survey out this week has found local councils, London boroughs and police authorities lack coherent strategies around mobile working and data security.

These areas were highlighted what disaster recovery plans councils had in place in the event that employees may not able to get to work. And only eight per cent of those local authorities interviewed had full disaster recovery plans.

When questioned about how important mobile working is to the organisation and data security for mobile devices, a further 90 per cent of participants said that they do not have special procedures for protecting sensitive data.

BeCrypt, data security, remote working and disaster recovery provider, conducted the research among 60 public sector IT representative Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) members, including 23 councils, 11 London boroughs, 18 smaller district and local councils and six police authorities during August and September.

Richard Brooks, BeCrypt regional director of sales also drew attention to a lack of policy around removable device security. 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.

"The use of laptops, USB devices and other removable media are posing an increasing risk to data security," he said. "It is evident that such organisations not only require a security policy, but also encryption solutions that enable it to be implemented."

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