Week in review: NHS loses data again, mobile for the tube?

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Bye bye USB stick

It should not surprise you, dear readers, that this week saw yet another loss of sensitive data by the NHS.

This time, a junior doctor left an unencrypted USB stick, containing details of patients' conditions and medications, on a train on their way home.

Apparently the doctor in question had not been made aware of trust privacy policies, nor did he have access to email to receive reminders on what to do.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has given the East & North Hertfordshire NHS Trust a slap on the wrist and made its chief executive (CEO) sign an undertaking to ensure it doesn’t happen again, but the public sector giant has once more dodged a fine.

It may be a tax payer funded organisation but we question whether it will ever address the issue if it keeps getting away with losing data.

I’m on the tube!

The possibility of getting mobile signal on the London Underground has been brought to the foreground again this week.

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is reportedly in talks with UK mobile operators to get the system up and running, allowing people to take their calls whilst commuting to work on the tube.

The idea was first proposed by the last Mayor, Ken Livingstone, back in 2005, but Transport for London claimed there hadn’t been a good enough proposal to take it forward.

The question remains though, do commuters want their carriages to be filled with Dom Jolly types or do they prefer the uncomfortable silence?

Best of the rest

The operating systems often wage war against one another and one of their biggest weapons is security. However, this week saw a security expert take a dig at them by claiming no OS was safer than any other.

There may have been a lot of panic recently about the lack of students taking up computer science in higher education. However the CEO of DirectGov thinks maths graduates will fill the gap.

The week was rounded off with a new survey showing more than half of UK brands broke good email practice by spamming their customers with unwanted emails.

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