News
Apricorn Comment - Classified Ministry of Defence documents found at bus stop
June 2021 by Jon Fielding, Managing Director, EMEA Apricorn
In light of the news this morning that classified MoD documents have been found at a bus stop in Kent, the comment below from Jon Fielding, Managing Director, EMEA Apricorn.
“The discovery of classified Ministry of Defence documents at a bus stop in Kent is disturbing given the efforts that organisations now put into digitally storing and securing sensitive of this nature. We don’t know how the documents came to be there, but this should serve as another wake up call for the government to take the need to secure sensitive data more seriously.
The public and private sector are adapting to a new way of working that requires data to be transferred between the office and other, less secure environments. This can only be achieved safely by digitising documents which brings indisputable benefits when it comes to data encryption, transfer, storage, online/offline back-ups, and management.
In order to control data once in electronic format, the implementation of sophisticated and robust end-point security is critical and the government should mandate and enforce the use of something as straightforward as an encrypted USB device for the secure transfer of sensitive data, thereby preventing access in the event it ends in the wrong hands or is found behind a bus stop.”
