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Government staff given fresh data security advice

Civil servants have been issued with new guidelines over how best to protect sensitive data.

Following on from a recent spate of high-profile data losses at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), staff at the department have been issued with data security handbooks aimed at reducing any future risk.

Among the instructions laid out in the new handbooks are to ensure that information carried on mobile devices such as BlackBerrys or laptops is encrypted and to only carry data out of the secure workplace when it is strictly necessary.

Dave Hartnett, acting chairman of HMRC, wrote in the foreword of the books: "Our department is the custodian of millions of items of data about our customers - in both electronic and paper format.

"We have an obligation to those customers to safeguard their personal details and other information."

At the same time, however, the Daily Mail has reported that the government department recently mixed up data CDs, sending out bedtime stories rather than payroll information to a number of businesses across the country.

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