Suella Braverman has dramatically resigned as Home Secretary, after sending a confidential document from her email to a parliamentary colleague.
Braverman will be replaced by former Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, a strong backer of Rishi Sunak’s Conservative leadership campaign, adding to the political uncertainty under Liz Truss’ leadership.
UK Home Secretary resigns
In her confrontational resignation letter, Suella Braverman said, “The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes. Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if we can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics.”
Suella Braverman served as Home Secretary for six weeks, having previously run in the Tory leadership contest, which was ultimately won by Liz Truss.
Need for preventative and reactive cybersecurity measures
This incident is another reminder that confidential documents and data can easily be passed between colleagues"
Security Expert - Achi Lewis, Area VP EMEA for Absolute Software, commented, “This incident is another reminder that confidential documents and data can easily be passed between colleagues through email and other channels, even when the recipient does not have the necessary security clearance."
Achi Lewis adds, "With cybercrime and ransomware attacks on the rise, it is essential that organisations ensure their data is sufficiently protected through both preventative and reactive cybersecurity measures.”
Secure access controls
Achi Lewis continues, “Cyber threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and threat actors are attacking junior employees and third parties to gain access to IT systems and steal information. It is, therefore, critical that organisations protect endpoints to prevent data and documents from being breached, through measures, such as secure access controls, which alert centralised IT teams to suspicious activity and enable them to freeze or shut off applications, and devices to prevent further damage.”
Resilient Zero Trust
Achi Lewis concludes, “Resilient Zero Trust is another vital cybersecurity tool to prevent everyone having access to everything, regularly verifying users and applications to provide selected access to data and documents and avoid a costly breach.”
The news comes less than a week after Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked as Chancellor, following the chaos of his mini-budget, with Jeremy Hunt taking his position.