Laptop theft at the BBC worth £240k

16 August 2011

A total of 146 laptops, 65 mobile phones and 17 BlackBerry devices were reported lost or stolen from the BBC over the past two years, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

The missing laptops and mobile phones are believed to be worth a total of £241,019.

The Freedom of Information response details the mobile IT devices that have vanished from the BBC between April 2008 and March 2011 and includes figures for commercial subsidiaries, such as BBC Worldwide.

The, potentially, stolen laptops had been valued at £219,000, with the missing mobile phones and BlackBerrys worth £22,019. Only 19 pieces of equipment, totalling £23,450, have been recovered.

A BBC spokesperson said that the corporation took laptop theft very seriously, and that one BBC worker has been investigated over the theft of a laptop.

Back in February this year, Ealing and Hounslow Councils were fined a total of £15,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), following two serious cases of laptop theft. Since April 2010, the ICO has the authority to hand out penalties of up to £500,000 to organisations in serious breach of the Data Protection Act.

The UK’s physical IT security expert, LapSafe® Products, advises those in the public sector to take adequate precautions to protect against laptop theft and theft of mobile IT devices. Laptops, tablets and netbooks are best protected in a secured lockable cabinet that can be bolted to the wall or floor, especially overnight. This cabinet should be constructed of reinforced steel, not wood or plastic, and be designed to resist crowbars, cutting equipment and lock-pickers. While laptops are in use, they should be fixed to furniture with laptop security cables or laptop lockdown systems.

To find out more about how to protect your mobile IT devices from theft, click here.