The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been fined £180,000 for repeated security failings.
The penalty, served by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), follows the loss of a back-up hard drive at HMP Erlestoke prison in Wiltshire in May 2013. The unencrypted hard drive contained sensitive and confidential information about 2,935 prisoners.
In October 2011, an unencrypted hard drive containing information on 16,000 prisoners at HMP High Down prison in Surrey was lost. Following this, the prison service provided new hard drives to all 75 prisons in England and Wales. However, the ICO found that the prison service didn’t realise the encryption option had to be turned on to work correctly.
ICO head of enforcement, Stephen Eckersley, says: “The fact that a government department with security oversight for prisons can supply equipment to 75 prisons throughout England and Wales without properly understanding, let alone telling them, how to use it beggars belief.”
