The U.K. government is starting to spend some of its £1.2 billion Business Finance Partnership fund, starting with a “peer-to-peer” lending companies, according to The Telegraph.

Peer-to-peer lending companies organize a loan for businesses and individuals without having to go to a bank. Funding Circle is rumored to have received £20 million. It focuses on the business loans side, with a marketplace where people can surf various investors and investment opportunities. The company says it has funding £65,526,520 in loans with 1,000 businesses using the site. The company was founded in 2010 and is otherwise backed by Index Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and angel investors.

Zopa is also rumored to have received £10 million. It handles consumer lending and says it has approved £253,737,220 in loans. It was founded in 2005 and is otherwise backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Balderton Capital, Wellington Partners, Tim Draper, and the Rowland family.

But this kind of lending structure is often unregulated, making it a risky move, albeit sometimes a move companies and individuals need to take in order to get favorable terms or work around bank loan rejections. The  Telegraph notes that these kinds of investments make by the U.K. government could be an effort to get a little more control over the peer-to-peer process, or a look inside its workings.

Others receiving funding from the partnership include Boost Capital, a venture capitalist firm, as well as other forms of lending solutions that cut out the banks.

London image via Shutterstock

Looks like it’s not just the newspapers snooping on UK citizens. The government itself has reported internal breaches, according to information released in a Freedom of Information request.

Over 1,000 breaches of personal information have occurred in the last year due to rogue civil servants accessing the data without permission, says ZDNet. These employees gain access to personal information, despite a lengthy vetting process giving them the permissible access in the first place. These employees came from the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions and The Department for Health. Only the Department for Work says it properly recorded breaches made, and revealed in 2011 there were around 1,000 civil servants punished for wrongful access to personal information. The latter says it did not record all the breaches, though it did record at least 150 of them.

Many of the security concerns we hear about are from external groups, such as Anonymous, other governments, and hackers working independently. They spread malware, take websites down, deface them, steal personally identifiable information and more. What people don’t realize is that these guys are the modern bank robbers. Just about anyone with access to a wealth of personally identifiable information has the opportunity to make a lot of money selling that data on the black markets. Indeed, while “hacktivists” and online protesting breaches have gotten much of the attention, hacking is still a financially lucrative game.

Companies and governments alike still need to realize that many hacks can come from within. ZDNet notes that those who do expose or illegally access personally identifiable information could be subject to a fine as expensive as $7,900. Whether or not those involved in the breaches have been fined is unknown.

via ZDNet, Tower Bridge image via Shutterstock