Industry news

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Last June Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust received a fine of £325,000, after patent medical records appeared on hard drives up for auction on the Internet. This week saw a fine of £175,000 after confidential employee details were displayed on Torbay Care Trust’s (TCT) website. It appears that the NHS is in dire need of a revised data protection policy.

The publishing of details including NI numbers, DOB, names, sexuality and religion of 1,373 staff members was directly uploaded by the Trust itself. The sensitive information compiled as an Excel spreadsheet remained on the Trust’s website for a total of 19 weeks. The data was only removed when a member of the public raised the issue, by this point the data had been seen more than 300 times.

The head of enforcement, Stephen Eckersley, at Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), who issued the penalty fine, said "Not only were they giving sensitive information out about their employees but they were also leaving them exposed to the threat of identity fraud".

The Trust recognised that it had failed to establish effective data privacy within its systems, TCT chief executive, Anthony Farnsworth, said: “This was an organisational issue, in which the absence of sufficient checks within our processes made an error possible”. The data breach of last June also occurred due to incorrect operational procedures as the Trust, which saw more than 252 hard drives removed from premises instead of being correctly destroyed.

Like any public sector organisation who handles sensitive data, the NHS need to rapidly establish effective data protection, partially at a time when the service is looking at migration of services and data to cloud based platforms. In both of these cases during this year, failing occurred due to a lack of due diligence.

BT has been awarded a contract by Cumbria County Council to provide fibre-optic broadband to the region.

The program will deliver superfast broadband to around 93 percent of homes and businesses in the area by the end of 2015.

The procurement process has seen changes with a reduction of the contract price from an expected £70 million in September to £51 million confirmed by BT on being awarded the contract.

Over £13 million in funding will be delivered by contributions from European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) after the EU decided to provide aid to the UK project.

The UK’s Cyber Security Strategy has been praised by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude on its one year anniversary.

Maude said: “One year after the Strategy’s publication a great deal has already been accomplished in our aim of protecting UK interests in cyberspace and making the UK one of the safest places to business online”.

The security strategy will develop sharing partnerships between the public and private sector in the effort to capitalise on industry expertise. In addition the UK’s Cyber Security Strategy is looking to harness the innate abilities of UK skills in education.

HP owned MphasiS has bought risk, compliance and transaction application provider Digital Risk for $175 million.

US based Digital Risk will provide MphasiS with increased market presence within the US and with access to more than 15 blue chip Digital Risk clients.

Digital Risk will continue to operate as a stand-alone business unit and retain company founding members under the acquisition.

MphasiS CEO Ganesh Ayyar, said of Digital Risk: "Their analytics platform combined with 1500 mortgage specialists makes them unique and differentiated" .

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said that it expects HMRC to move to prosecute large technology companies that pay low tax in the UK.

PAC chairman MP Margaret Hodge, said: “multinationals are using structures and exploiting current tax legislation to move offshore profits that are clearly generated from economic activity in the UK.”

The PAC described HMRC as being “too lenient” in its claiming of tax from large multi-nationals, even when corporations demonstrate they are following UK tax law.

Centrica is expected to leave £200 million of investment in the UK’s new nuclear facilities when it pulls out at the start of 2013.

The owners of British Gas had the option to take a 20 percent stake in the construction of a new plants alongside French energy giant EDF, however Centrica chief executive Sam Laidlaw is expected to confirm the departure of the company from the project.

The expected exit has been predicted over fears that the company cannot see any profit after price increases in the construction of the new nuclear infrastructure. Centrica is now expected to focus instead on US expansion.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that firms now generate an average of 19 percent of their turnover from online sales.

Total revenue reached £483bn according to the ONS E-commerce and ICT Activity, 2011 report, which covers multiple UK sectors including retail, production and property.

Developing of IT infrastructure is pushing forward online generated revenue growth, with 34 percent of firm with over 1,000 employees, using broadband speeds of 100Mbit/s or greater.

A tender worth £310 million over a four year period has been placed by the London Universities Purchasing Consortium (LUPC).

The consortium is looking to procure hardware including desktop computers, tablet devices and laptops. LUPC is seeking to employ the series of multiple suppliers in a framework agreement. The contract is planned to commence at the start of August 2013.

The deal includes an option for extension alongside the provision for other IT services including mobile connectivity and client computing services.

SMEs in Africa are expected to see substantial benefits from the Western Link rail project. The project will see the construction of a 147km line stretching from Swaziland to South Africa.

The development of the project stipulates the employment of SMEs by the main suppliers, with Western Link expected to drive economic development in both countries.

The line has been designed to link up with other intra-continental routes after its construction, strengthening links between countries and the infrastructure of Africa as a whole.

Research from Capgemini has revealed that IT departments are losing control of cloud services and platforms as business units take increasing control.

45 percent of respondents to a Capgemini survey revealed that they had individual business units that had responsibility for cloud services.

Capgemini senior vice president Ron Tolido said: “The initiative for driving cloud solutions is shifting from the IT department to the business unit as companies focus more on tangible business value”.