Criminals steal police mobile phone data server

Police are investigating the theft of a server from a forensics company that helps police track terror suspects through mobile phone calls.

The server was stolen from the offices of Forensics Telecommunication Services (FTS) in Sevenoaks in Kent. Local police said that the burglary happened overnight between the 6 and 7 August.

According to a statement from the company, the server was security protected and contained administrative data and details of some case files in relation to the company's forensic work.

"In the unlikely event that the server was accessed, none of the data stored on the server in any way compromises ongoing police operations," a statement on its website read. "The information is made up of either old cases that have passed through the judicial process, or cases that are already in the judicial system and so subject to full disclosure to both defence and prosecution teams."

The company said that all data was restored from backups and as a result of the incident the company was now "undertaking a full and comprehensive review of security across the whole company".

According to security experts, the case highlights the need to be cautious when organisation put their trust in third parties to look after sensitive data.

"Due to the nature of its work, it is likely that the FTS has a stringent information security policy," said Jamie Cowper, European marketing director of encryption company PGP. "However, any company which outsources without a thorough assessment of the threat status of all third party contractors runs the risk of rendering existing corporate security policies useless.

He said that in order to enforce an enterprise data protection strategy, organisations must account for every eventuality.

"In any case, the immediate disclosure and swift action taken by the company following the breach is yet another positive indication that organisations are beginning to take data protection seriously," he said.