Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

UK Police Fined For Using Unencrypted Memory Sticks

Posted by Soulskill on from the expensive-security-lesson dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Information Commissioner's Office has filed a suit for £120,000 against the Greater Manchester Police because officers regularly used memory sticks without passwords to copy data from police computers and work on it away from the department. In July 2011, thousands of peoples' information was stolen from a officer's home on an unencrypted memory stick. A similar event happened at the same department in September 2010. 'This was truly sensitive personal data, left in the hands of a burglar by poor data security. The consequences of this type of breach really do send a shiver down the spine,' said ICO deputy commissioner David Smith."

3 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What's the solution (for Linux)? by Bert64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Remove the usb-storage module, or blacklist it so that it cannot load.

    Other classes of usb device have their own modules, which you can either leave alone or remove at your leisure if you want to use them (printers etc)...

    You could also just disable the automount service, then no removable media will get mounted and you would need root in order to access it manually.

    It's actually much easier than the various hoops people jump through to try and implement the same on windows.

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  2. Re:*facepalm* by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, a fine against the police department will certainly show them! Oh wait.. isn't it the taxpayers who pay for their budget

    It'll come out of their budget. And in a bureaucracy, that's your status. It will certainly make the police take data security seriously, which is the point of the fine, not to collect money for the Exchequer to refund to taxpayers.

  3. Re:Why are they even using USB flash drives? by SimonTheSoundMan · · Score: 3, Informative

    They have to have police officers in American schools because gun crime is so bad. In the UK two kids will hit each other, in America a kid will bring a gun to school the next day. I actually thought someone was trolling me when I first heard that American schools have armed police officers.

    http://www.ifpo.org/articlebank/school_officers.html

    It all fights fire with fire. Totally backwards and yes, Orwellian.