Oops! FSA loses 20 laptops in just three years

City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, has lost 41 laptops and Blackberries containing secure document and emails over the last three years.

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by Iain Martin on Oct 18, 2010 at 14:19

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Oops! FSA loses 20 laptops in just three years

City watchdog, the Financial Services Authority (FSA), has lost 41 laptops and Blackberries containing secure document and emails, in the past three years.

The regulator reported 10 laptops, seven Blackberries and two USB memory sticks were lost or stolen in this year alone. Staff at the financial regulator lost eight laptops and ten Blackberries in 2009 but only two laptops and two Blackberries were lost in the whole of 2008.

The FSA, which is funded entirely by the banks, financial advisers and other City institutions that it regulates, was only able to recover two of the 41 laptops, Blackberries or USBs lost or stolen from its staff in the past three years. The majority of devices were lost by FSA staff with only 11 stolen over the same period, according to a Freedom of Information request from Citywire.

It noted that all its laptops and memory sticks are encrypted while its Blackberry devices are password protected and the FSA claimed it blocked further access to secure information by remotely disabling the hardware.

Data security is a hot topic for the FSA which fined the Nationwide Building Society £980,000 in 2007 after a laptop containing the personal details of around 11 million customers was stolen from the home of an employee. Zurich Insurance was fined £2.27 million in August for the loss of computer tapes in South Africa containing the details of 46,000 customers.

An earlier Freedom of Information request revealed that the FSA had disciplined four staff in 2009 over the external loss of information.

The scale of losses at the FSA is dwarfed by the Ministry of Defence, where 220 laptops were lost and 120 stolen in the past two years. The MoD employed around 268,000 military and civilian staff compared to the FSA which now has 3,400 employees. More seriously, less than half of the lost MoD laptops were not encrypted, according to a Freedom of Information request from technology consultants Lewis Communications.

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8 comments so far. Why not have your say?

Can the FSA fine itself? Who would benefit from the fine?

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Authority without responsibility is a social trend these days.

When a laptop which contains sensitive data is assigned to someone, make it a condition of contract that they are are responsible for it and if lost then their job goes the same way.

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If they had bluenio's then this wouldn't have happened, but it seems they'd rather loose our data than use bluetooth on their Blackberries and Laptops!! I can't believe our government is so backwards with technology!!

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The problem isn't just the FSA - they're just one of many companies who have to report they've lost this data type... there are thousands of companies out there who are authorised to store sensitive personal data who aren't immune from data security 'errors' - the Data Protection act is great in principal but it's enforcement is a joke...

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This level of carelessness is disgraceful. Management are responsible!

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What I really dislike is that so many companies now have overseas call centres which request a whole raft of private info "for our data protection". I recently tried to complain to Talk-talk, and went through a call centre and had to speak to about 15 different "representatives". I objected to them asking for my full name, date of birth (DOB) and address as each new person spoke to me. I suggested they only needed a few letters or part of the DOB to verify who I was. They then informed me they had this info anyway, so were only checking it. It appears that all the telephone-authorised staff had this too.

I just hope that all the staff are suitably motivated and honest that they do misuse this information, and that security is tight enough that none "escapes".

Whilst I hope I'm sure that Talk talk (even though apparently operating their call centres in overseas countries, presumably offering lower pay to their staff than here in the UK) will take adequate data protection provisions, it is small wonder that identity theft is increasings at several 10s of % every year. Many other companies operate similar call centres, so I hope they all guard the data well!!

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Didn't I see the MOD is to save £100m on laptops by buying directly... now that's savings.. so how many laptops do they have? & spend =??

So maybe 340 lost/stolen/strayed is, well, a small % error...

(just joking!).

And what happens to the old ones? Sounds like a high replacement rate... I bet few businesses spend that much on IT kit.

Deduct the cost from their gold plated pension.

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Jonathan

Oct 21, 2010 at 02:19

Weak article, Ok so x laptops were lost, but what percentage of laptops is this? Also if they were encrypted it is practically impossible to get anything off them.

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