It’s strange how we keep hearing about highly personal information going missing of late, you could think that it’s the news stations just reporting on this topic a lot more or it could be the fact that our data is really going missing a lot these days thanks to laptops and data discs. Today we are hearing that the Scottish Ambulance Service has admitted to losing a 999 disc with nearly a million emergency calls on.

This disc was for the West of Scotland and held Ambulance Service emergency calls dating back to February 2006. The lost disc had reportedly held 894,629 phone calls and even addresses and patient names. The Scottish Ambulance Service said that this 999 disc had gone missing when it was being couriered by TNT on June 9th.

The disc was going to a MIS Emergency Services who are a specialist IT company, now you may wonder why this disc was not taken by hand to this specialist company. If the data is so important, why trust a delivery company?

Now we know encryption is good these days but many hackers can break computer software, unlock firmwares and a lot more. So when we hear the ambulance service making a statement that assures us the information on the disc was protected by high security industry standard encryption and a password, you do not think its unbreakable.

We also hear that the blame has been pointed at TNT and the ambulance service had followed guidelines, so should we then think that it’s TNT’s fault or should guidelines be changed? Data has been lost recently from the NHS trust and HMRC, its not good blaming people when really the focus should be on making changes to “guidelines”.

Visit Scottish Ambulance