Ministry of Defence Laptop Data Loss Worsens

By Nathan Statz

January 24, 2008: When the British Ministry of Defence had a laptop stolen with the personal details of 600,000 people interested in joining the armed forces there was a collective gasp at the extend of the data loss, further reports have come to light which show that the Ministry experienced many more such data losses.

The laptop theft which sparked it all was stolen from the car of a junior Naval Officer who left the computer in his car overnight. The Ministry has announced it will be writing to inform those effected by the data loss and launched an internal enquiry as to how so much data came to be stored on the one laptop. The enquiry has so far discovered further data losses, with the Defence Minister Des Browne admitting that the Ministry had lost two other laptops with unencrypted information since 2005.

"The volume of information in this case is significant and I am concerned about the sensitivity of some of the information contained on the laptop and the fact it pertains to military personnel. But this is not just about security. We will need to know why so much information on so many people was held on a laptop and whether any of it had been retained for too long." information commissioner Richard Thomas told The Register.

Government departments are known for their strict and rigid security policies, so having such a blatant slip up with massive data loss serves as a reminder to the public sector that you can never be too careful.

“Whilst it would be easy to attack the public sector for its security policies due to this and other recent data losses such as the HMRC and DVLA, the commercial sector is also plagued by security slip-ups. Organisations can implement every manual security solution available, but as long as they have employees, there will always be an element of human error that leaves them exposed.” said Peter Groucutt, managing director, Databarracks

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