There's news of another UK public sector data breach today, as the prison service is reported to have lost a portable hard drive after confiding it to subcontractor EDS some time before July 2007. Apparently the drive contained personal details of up to 5,000 prison service officers.
From one perspective, this could just be written off as the media pouncing on any public sector data loss because it's a hot topic at the moment. From another perspective, though, it's interesting to see the potential cost of the breach being taken into account, in a way which it does not seem to have been in previous instances.
According to the Chairman of the Prison Officers' Association, the breach "could ultimately cost the taxpayer millions", because "if the information lost is personal and sensitive, it may well mean staff having to move prisons, move homes and relocate their families."
At this stage, none of the reports suggests that the information has (in the phrase used after the HMRC breach) fallen into the wrong hands. By contrast, no such calculation seemed to be made at the time of that previous breach, despite the fact that it involved the taxpayer details of millions of citizens.
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