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As I have written about before in this blog, taking robust precautions to safeguard our systems and data is more essential than ever. That might be down to keeping staff clued up on their password hygiene, not giving user details away for the price of a Mars bar, or having robust penetration testing regimes and cybersecurity in place.
As an ICT director responsible for more than one local council, said to me before Christmas, its not about IF you will suffer a cyber attack, its really about WHEN that you need to reconcile yourself to. The extent of preparations prior, will determine how fast you will get back on your feet and how much it will all cost. A number of councils, the NHS and the UKs largest housing group have all fallen victim to attackers.
The latest victim last month was Capita.
The Guardian reported, “Capita admits customer data may have been breached during cyber-attack”, “Hack caused major outages for some clients including local councils and ‘potentially accessed public sector data ‘”. Full article here
Capita runs a lot of outsourcing across the UK and public services, particularly local councils. There is no suggestion in the article, that hosted databases specifically for social housing customers were specifically part of the breach. However it illustrates the importance of where our data is stored and how secure it is. From the Guardian article, you can get the feeling that any ‘data in transit’ might have been more at risk than hosted solutions.
Putting it in perspective, the article states while only 4% of its IT systems were affected, Capita admitted that data was breached during the incident.
When procuring Cloud hosting, most contracts these days stipulate compliance to organisation and local authority guidelines. Commonly these include segregation of Cloud data and sometimes enhanced storage/access to blue-light service standards.
While I say ‘most’, I mean all of mine! In reality, I have come across quite a few hapless councils (& others) who have acquired Cloud solutions with the security profile of a big mature Swiss cheese. Some of these can be way worse in a security sense than traditional on-premise solutions, accessed behind relative safety of a Citrix farm.
Nobody can be complacent and if anything, Cloud hosting needs ever more imagination than ever to keep data safe. Good initial contract conditions are essential, regular checks (such as robust penetration testing, sample restores/extracts etc) and continued vigilance the way to go.
As Sergeant Phil Esterhaus's (Michael Conrad) morning roll call catchphrase in 'Hill Street Blues' used to go, “Let's be careful out there”.
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Related Post: Don't be fooled in your procurements by smoke and mirrors or prototypes
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The Brian Jonestown Massacre – When Jokers Attack.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009
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