Home Office leaks 1,500 immigration files

The Home Office has accidentally leaked data relating to 1,598 immigration cases. On being uploaded to a public web page, the data was reported to have been left there for two weeks.

The incident comes just weeks after the Ministry of Justice was fined £140,000 by the Information Commissioner's Office for releasing details of prisoners via email.

Commenting on this latest blunder, Martin Sugden, CEO of Boldon James, said: "Although this particular incident involves the details being published online, the lesson is the same; if the data had been appropriately classified then the users would have been aware it was sensitive and would not have uploaded it in error.

"Classifying data or information at the point of creation establishes a ‘safety net’ which can prevent sensitive data from being distributed, and is a security strategy that a growing number of organisations are adopting.

"There already exists a government Protective Marking Scheme (GPMS) which requires all UK government and public sector organisations to apply security classifications to information assets, so for the incident in question the data should have had a security label applied. The point here is that organisations cannot rely on visual markings alone, and only by using a data classification solution would enable the organisation to control the sharing and release of information."

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