The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has lost personal details of about 100,000 Armed Forces employees after a computer hard drive went missing.
IT contractor EDS informed the MoD about the missing hard drive when it carried out an audit on Wednesday.
The hard drive is believed to have more than 1.5 million pieces of information stored on it, including details of 600,000 potential recruits. It contains bank details, passport numbers, addresses, dates of birth, driving licence details and telephone numbers.
An MoD spokesman said: “On Wednesday 8 October we were informed by our contractor EDS that it was unable to account for a portable hard drive used in connection with the administration of Armed Forces personnel data.
“This came to light during a priority audit EDS is conducting to comply with the Cabinet Office data handling review. The MoD Police is investigating with EDS.”
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MoD Police is currently looking into the whereabouts of the hard drive, but do not know if it was stolen.
