MoD computer hard drive missing

Hi Everyone,

An investigation is under way into the disappearance of a computer hard drive which could contain the details of about 100,000 Armed Forces personnel.

Link: news.bbc.co.uk...

Once again we have another spectacular loss of personal information and no surprises its the MoD again! I really don't understand how a hard drive could go "missing"

It is understood the drive was not encrypted.

What??? This just speaks volumes if you ask me.

If the MoD can't even protect its data/information, then how the hell would they be able to protect us as a country?

The missing drive is the latest information security breach to hit the MoD.

In July officials revealed 658 MoD laptops had been stolen over the past four years and 26 portable memory sticks containing classified information had been either stolen or misplaced since January.

Looks like they have a serious leak over there. It sounds like these instances have been reported, but not made public.

Dont worry though, because the US DoD is not much better. I have received 3 letters in the past couple of years because the DoD has lost a computer or drive with personnel data on them. As a former soldier, they have all of my personal information. So far, I have been lucky and have not seen an instance where I was ID theft victim, but I keep an eye on my bank acct and credit anyway.

Your quoted statement is very disturbing. Why they would not encrypt any data being stored with a 3rd party contractor makes less than 0 sense to me. I dont care how well a company checks out, you never ever store sensitive information offsite without encrypting it first. The MoD set themselves up for this big time.

reply to post by wheresthetruth


Exactly, you've hit the nail on the head my friend. I just really don't understand how a military organisation such as the MoD, that should be at the forefront of technology & privacy, fails to even encrypt its sensitive data.

As to how the hard drive actually went "missing", again I am at a loss on how to describe this. Maybe if the personal details of someone charged with preventing this type of thing from occuring, suddenly went missing then they would start taking their job a little bit more seriously.

I know home computer users that store their data more securely than this! Why on earth wouldn't this type of information be encrypted? or at the very, very least stored in a password protected excel spreadsheet?

Like I said its really hard to put faith into the government & military when things that shouldn't occur like this happen on an all too frequent basis.