The loss of two discs containing the details of 25 million people was blamed on the excessive targets imposed on the HM Revenue and Customs, a member of the House of Lords has said.
The Earl of Erroll, an IT expert believed to be the only Lord to have programming skills, has said that the scandal occurred 'because of targets (and) budgets' it was reported in Zdnet.co.uk
In a recent Infosecurity conference, the UK's largest gathering of information security professionals, the Lord explained that it was likely employees bypassed security procedures in order to meet the targets set.
In light of the HMRC disc scandal, peers yesterday supported ammending the criminal justice and immigration bill, which would make the careless release or loss of personal data a criminal offence.
In the HMRC case, information such as bank details, which should have been stripped from the databases on the discs before being sent to the National Audit Office, were not carried out because of the extra cost it would have incurred.
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