A consultant’s report (http://bit.ly/8Y0y0c) on the theft of four laptops at St Albans council - in which the details of more than 14,500 postal voters went walkabout - has highlighted continuing lapses on the security front, says Origin Storage, the storage systems integration specialist.

"The theft of the laptops caused an uproar, but the report from Socitm has identified that staff are still being lax on data security, despite the fact that other security procedures have been tightened up," said Andy Cordial, Origin’s managing director.

"Local press notes about the report make for interesting reading, not least because, although staff are physically locking hardware to their desks, and portable device data is being encrypted, employees are still taking a poor approach to security generally, such as sharing their passwords," he added.

According to Cordial, whose company supplies portable data security systems with multiple layers of defence to clients, using encryption is only part of the equation when it comes to protecting data.

As reports in the security press have revealed, it’s all to easy to lose the encryption key along with the laptop (http://bit.ly/bYWItx) and, as IT analyst agency Quocirca reported last July, companies must take better control of their critical information and use all possible methods to prevent information falling into the wrong hands should a device be lost or stolen.

That report (http://bit.ly/blGJSn), the Origin Storage MD went on to say, concluded that there are significant productivity gains to be generated through the ease of good administration and management when it comes to protecting data in transit.

"Multi-layered data systems - such as the Datalocker device (http://bit.ly/2vb6y9) we recently introduced, and which defends data using PIN and encryption technologies - are now the best option for organisations wanting an easy to use portable data security system," he said.

"When added to other security procedures such as positive staff vetting for employees handling private data, the multi-layered defence strategy starts to make sense - especially if how the layers work are easy for understand, as well as use, for the employees concerned," he added.