Richard Thomas said further cases of individuals’ private details being lost by official organisations had been brought to his attention since the HM Revenue and Customs lost discs fiasco.
“I think they are coming to us on a confessional basis to bring our attention to problems they have with data security in their own organisations,” he said.
But he made clear that none of the incidents were on the same scale as the “shocking” HMRC incident, which put millions at risk of identity fraud.
Thomas said he thought it unlikely that the incident, which involved two discs being sent through the post, was caused by just one junior official.
“I would question whether anybody should be allowed to download an entire database of this scale without going through the most rigorous pre-authorisation checks,” he said.
He added that Robert Hannigan, head of intelligence, security and resilience in the Cabinet Office, would be continuing his review of the way data is handled by government departments.