UK government investment arm cops to 40-hour leak of officials' contact details

The UK government's corporate finance adviser has admitted that an employee left an internal file containing the names and work email addresses of dozens of officials publicly accessible for around 40 hours. The breach, first reported by The Guardian, was disclosed in UK Government Investments' (UKGI) annual report, which says …

[AMBxx]

internal management file

aka Excel spreadsheet

[Bebu sa Ware]

It's always the employee…

a member of staff "did not follow established information security policies."

There are a host of questions in that weaselese.

In this context what is meant exactly by established which in no way means codified, promulgated or published.

Unless staff a regularly inducted, refreshed and tested on current policy - security or otherwise - it is entirely disingenuous to claim any failure on their part is entirely their fault.

Inadequate systems, inadequate support and incompetent (oh, and also inadequate) leadership are invariably the root causes of these systemic failures. That is not going to change soon - or ever - so these failures will recur but those responsible will likely become better at concealment.

[M7S]

What, pray, is the danger?

In this instance, unless I have misunderstood, the names and work email addresses of public servants were accessible to the public.

Unless these were people working for one of the security services or similar, should this perhaps not be available anyway?

[just4this]

Re: What, pray, is the danger?

"should this perhaps not be available anyway?"

It is. They are all available here.....

https://uk.linkedin.com/company/uk-government-investments

Need to log in for full list, four of them are listed before the link to all of them though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What, pray, is the danger?

Would you be happy to have your work details made public ? I wouldn't, it would be a hackers paradise.