News Mobile Computing Laptop loss leads to staff sacking Laptop loss leads to staff sacking |
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| Written by Matt Chapman | |
| Tuesday, 12 August 2008 | |
 Colchester University Hospital has sacked one of its managers following the theft of his work laptop – containing the unencrypted names, postcodes and treatment plans of several thousand patients – from a car in June.
“Following a disciplinary hearing held on Friday after a detailed investigation, the senior manager whose hospital laptop computer was stolen has been dismissed from the Trust with immediate effect," said Peter Murphy, chief executive of Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust. “The unanimous decision of the disciplinary panel sends out a clear statement about how seriously the Trust takes security and patient confidentiality.” Mr Murphy added that the Trust would follow the recommendations from the report and an external consultancy would carry out an independent assessment of its procedures and protocols on data security. Jamie Cowper, director of marketing for EMEA at PGP Corporation, said this latest incident again demonstrates the serious problems with security that exist within the public sector. "However, it also shows that disciplinary bodies are getting increasingly tough with those people that contravene data protection policies," Cowper added. "Clearly, the public sector wants to be seen to be addressing this problem." Cowper said the weakest link in data protection is more often than not the end user, but the real lesson to be learnt was that technologies such as encryption should be implemented and managed on an enterprise-wide basis, not left up to the individual. "Unless there is evidence of grievous misconduct, the responsibility for data security should lie with the organisation as a whole – and that means that in cases such as this, punishment should be top down rather than bottom up,” he said. |
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