Oh this winter of disk content!

Unless you’ve been living in a hole this past 3 months you cannot have missed the chaos ensuing over the this governments inability to ensure that our private information is kept rightfully private.

Most in real positions of authority have been doing everything they can to adopt the Teflon coated shoulder position in order to ensure that anything vaguely resembling collateral damage slipped down to more lowly representatives. The one exception being the CEO of HMRC who rightly and with considerable dignity resigned on the spot.

The media onset of this local authority and that government department losing yet more data was inevitable as every newspaper and media channel in the land was looking for further cock-ups. Yet much like the disaster zones of the world when the TV crews and journalists have gone I suspect that we will return back to the way that it was before.

Whilst the flurry of legislative activity over the last few months is largely welcomed, the very parties who committed the error in the first place are exempt from the proposed legislation!! Is this somewhat hypocritical or what?!

The truth is that any commercial organisation taking an equivalent laissez faire attitude would be out of business within the blink of an eye. Data represents the very lifeblood of many businesses therefore procedurally and security-wise protection measures are at the core of these corporate strategies. Whereas Government departments only use the data to facilitate a function not initiate an income.

So perhaps rather than looking to legislate against an already pretty securitised commercial world, it may be better to invest the time and energy in getting your own house in order first!