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Home > Data from over 100 Treasury staff devices wiped in 2020 after users entered wrong passcode

Data from over 100 Treasury staff devices wiped in 2020 after users entered wrong passcode

Written by Sam Trendall on 14 July 2021 in News
News

More than 5% of all devices were reset

Credit: Satendra Kushwah from Pixabay [1] 

Last year more than 100 mobile phones used by staff at HM Treasury were wiped of all data after users entered the wrong pin code.

In evidence given recently to parliament’s Treasury select committee, the department’s permanent secretary Tom Scholar admitted that his own device had been wiped last summer after he forgot his passcode. A freedom of information request from news agency PA has now revealed that the perm sec’s phone was one of 117 that suffered the same fate at some point in 2020. 

This equates to 5.6% of the total of 2,100 in use across the department.


Related content

  • Treasury found ‘lots of positives’ in virtual spending review process [2]
  • Review calls for Treasury to push Whitehall on better use of data [3]
  • Treasury’s £250m IT deal with NTT Data to be extended into eighth year [4]

“At the beginning of June last year, it had to be reset because, under government security as applies to mobile phones, if the password is incorrectly entered more than a few times, the phone is locked, and the only way to unlock it is to reset it,” Scholar told MP last month. “Resetting it means that the data on it is lost. I knew that when it happened last June, and I am certainly not the only person to whom that has happened.”

Scholar had been asked, via an FOI request, to release transcripts of texts he had sent to David Cameron regarding the former prime minister’s lobbing on behalf of fintech firm Greensill Capital. 

The request was initially refused on account of Scholar’s phone having been wiped of all data. However, the messages were subsequently published after they were supplied by their recipient.

 

About the author

Sam Trendall is editor of PublicTechnology

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Source URL: https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/data-over-100-treasury-staff-devices-wiped-2020-after-users-entered-wrong-passcode

Links
[1] https://pixabay.com/users/satendra77-6894120/
[2] https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/treasury-found-%E2%80%98lots-positives%E2%80%99-virtual-spending-review-process
[3] https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/review-calls-treasury-push-whitehall-better-use-data
[4] https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/treasury%E2%80%99s-%C2%A3250m-it-deal-ntt-data-be-extended-eighth-year
[5] https://www.publictechnology.net/tags/cyber-week
[6] https://www.publictechnology.net/tags/cybersecurity
[7] https://www.publictechnology.net/tags/data
[8] https://www.publictechnology.net/categories/defence-and-security
[9] https://www.publictechnology.net/categories/public-order-justice-and-rights