Ealing council suffers major data breach

2009-09-04

A London council worker was responsible for an IT intrusion across his employer's computer network, it has been revealed.

The Ealing Borough Council IT and communications system was offline for nearly a week after the employee plugged a virus-infected memory stick into a computer, reports the Guardian.

Speaking to the newspaper following the incident, Liberal Democrat at the council Gary Malcolm said: "If this had happened in a private company, people would be sacked."

Nicki Wallace, global solutions marketing manager at RSA recently warned that social networks are starting to pose a real risk to corporate institutions.

She explained that the firm is finding a huge number of places where clients are finding themselves exposed to vulnerabilities.

Many employees are guilty of "accidentally sharing, or not thinking about what they are sharing, in terms of their updates", she added.

This particularly applies to private conversations across networks such as Facebook and MSN Messenger.

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