Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, wanted to use his favorite iPad in his Westminster office, but got so frustrated with the state of government IT that he had set up his own Wi-Fi network.

Francis Maude had the Wi-Fi network set up in order to use his smartphone and iPad in his office, while saying that the Cabinet Office’s systems are “clunky”, “rubbish”, and apparently impossible to use.

However, those “rubbish” systems cost the taxpayers around £7,000 per employee, and were developed with government security in mind. Still, 4 of the 6 levels of security classification are to be depreciated in an attempt to allow Cabinet Office employees to use more off-the-shelf hardware. It seems that only “secret” and “top secret” labels won’t be changed, while 90% of documents will revert to “official” classification. According to security researchers, Francis Maude’s willingness to endanger the security of the parliamentary network, systems and information was “incredible”.

The matter is that if Minister really has installed his own Wi-Fi network, then this segment won’t be configured, managed or audited by security experts in the House of Commons. This would render them blind to the risks it represents. In other words, actions like those of Francis Maude demonstrate that the hackers don’t even need to hack into the reliable system – they have their target right there on his network. So, it’s not only the bad guys the UK government has to worry about.