Criminal Justice data security solutions: Secure transfer, collaboration and file sharing

Criminal Justice data security: What's at risk?

The Criminal Justice System in the UK, made up of many different agencies covering police, courts, prison, revenue and customs, youth justice board, victim support and many other services, is under increasing pressure to offer a more 'joined up' service. The sharing of information is fundamental to this improvement programme, and yet as data crosses internal and external firewalls and boundaries, the risk of data loss increases as evidenced by the following recent security breaches:

• The Ministry of Justice, lost an unencrypted memory stick containing budget spreadsheets which included the names, national insurance and employee numbers of 1,500 MoJ staff

• HMRC lost two disks in internal post containing the names, addresses, dates of birth, national insurance numbers and bank details of 25 million people.

• PA Consultant/Home Office lost a laptop containing details of 84,000 prison inmates

Secure access and information sharing: The challenge

National police systems and national organisations such as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Revenue and Customs and other agencies, are dependent on being able to easily access and share information with other organisations involved in delivering criminal justice.

In Criminal Justice data security is a key enable of the flow of information between entities and systems. Indeed the Criminal Justice IT Programme, CJ Exchange, requires that data can be accessed across disparate systems.

Additional demands are placed on the system by the need to comply with the UK Data Protection Act 1998 - governing the storage of, and the access by individuals to, personal information, and the need to respond to external requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which allows individuals access to information held by Public Authorities of "recorded" non-personal information. The criminal justice system is also increasingly focused on providing accurate information for citizens who are seeking its protection.

Add to this the massive growth in email and its increasing use as evidence in the courts, plus the wider use of mobile working which means vital data could be exposed to loss or misuse, and it's easy to see why data security and availability have become an important topic in the Criminal Justice system.