Security

Is your data safe?

Last checked 13 November 2026

The GOV.UK provider list cannot tell you. It keeps growing, and being on it means one thing: the product is technically integrated with DEFRA’s Report receipt of waste service. It says nothing about how the records you file through that product are protected: where they are stored, who can read them, whether the company behind the product has had its own security checked. That is a separate question, and it is yours to ask.

Five questions to put to any provider

  1. Do you hold a Cyber Essentials certificate, and what is its registry link? Cyber Essentials is the UK government-backed scheme run by IASME for the National Cyber Security Centre. Every current certificate is on a public register. A provider that holds one can send the link in seconds; the register entry names the organisation, the level and the expiry date. A badge on a website is not a certificate. The register entry is.
  2. Where are my records stored? Which country, and which country the software runs in. If either is outside the UK or the EEA, ask what transfer safeguards are in place, because you are the data controller for the personal data in your own records.
  3. Do you carry cyber insurance? Not a guarantee of anything, but a company that has been underwritten has been asked the questions above by someone whose money depends on the answers.
  4. Who in my business can see and change a record? A driver, a weighbridge operator and an office administrator should not have the same access, and the rules that separate them should be enforced by the system, not by a setting someone remembers to tick.
  5. Once a record is filed and signed, can it be changed? A duty-of-care record that can be quietly edited afterwards is worth less to you in an inspection than one that cannot.

Our answers

The list: GOV.UK, Report receipt of waste: choose a software provider. DutyOS Ltd is one of them and is not affiliated with DEFRA.

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