Document Management News

The UK government has launched a new public website to release government data, but the security of the site has been called into question.

The data.gov.uk site has been developed with the help of world wide web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of Southampton University.

The site contains more than 2,500 sets of data from across government about all aspects of our lives, ranging from information about education and traffic, to tax and crime.

Carl Leonard, threat research manager at internet security firm Websense, said, "The data.gov.uk scheme is undoubtedly a welcome step forward in terms of bringing valuable data together and the project showcases the ground-breaking capabilities of Web 2.0.

"But it is important that we are aware of the outside risks posed by external parties that will no doubt seek to abuse the information available. As we know, malware authors go where people and data are, so sites offering such services could become a potential target for defacement, data manipulation or hosting web-based exploit code."

Leonard said, "Hosting significant amounts of data in one public space makes for an easy target and it is therefore important that users are aware of the potential threats."

Berners-Lee and Shadbolt were asked by prime minister Gordon Brown last year to help transform public access to government information. The data.gov.uk initiative was intended to "drive cultural change" in Whitehall towards the publication of data held by government departments and agencies.

All of the data is non-personal and has been released in a format that can be reused by any individual or business to create new software tools, such as applications that provide information on house prices, local schools, amenities and services, or access to local hospitals.