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.
The hard drive was being held by EDS, which is the Ministry of Defence's main IT contractor. The MoD said it was told the drive was missing on Wednesday following a priority audit carried out by EDS. It is thought to contain more than 1.5m pieces of information, including the details of 600,000 potential recruits. There may also be some personal information including bank and driving licence details, passport numbers, addresses, dates of birth and telephone numbers. It is understood the drive was not encrypted. EDS said in a statement that it was "unable to account for a removable hard drive that was held in a secure location at our facility in Hook" - a reference to the company's premises near Basingstoke, Hants. Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said the latest loss showed the government's attitude to military personnel data was "reckless". 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.
