Lost in the post

This morning the UK news covered a story about a disk containing the names and addresses of over 11,000 teachers that has been lost in the post.

This is not an isolated incident. So many companies load large amounts of data onto disks, usb drives and then the information simply vanishes or is ‘misplaced’.

The good news is that this data was encrypted – this is probably the first case where it was protected. If you need to hand over large amounts of data it

• should be encrypted [this data was]
• sent securely [this data was sent using a tracking system]
• someone should be waiting to accept the data [the loss was identified when the tracking system showed it has missed the delivery spot]

All in all, Atos Origin, the company sending the data followed all the rules.