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Departmental Data Protection

Answer

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) takes any attacks on, or misuse of, its information, networks and associated media storage devices very seriously and has robust procedures in place to mitigate against and investigate such occurrences. Furthermore, new processes, instructions and technological aids are continually being implemented to mitigate human errors and raise the awareness of every individual in the Department with regards to cyber security.The following tables provide details of the number of reported losses of confidential and personal data centrally reported within the Department from 2005 to 2010. Figures will continue to be adjusted to incorporate subsequent recoveries of items, the reporting of additional losses and subsequent clarification of historic incidents. The following figures reflect the latest data held as of 10 March 2010.In a number of these cases the documents were historical and so the original protective marking would have been eligible to be considered for downgrading. This would certainly reduce any risk of compromise. A number of these incidents came to light as a consequence of thorough housekeeping activities and revised MOD data management practices. It is likely that a large number of instances relate to records of the destruction of documents not being accurately maintained, rather than documents actually having gone missing.

Reported incidents of the loss of confidential data in each of the last five years
	Total
2005	77
2006	130
2007	52
2008	1099
2009	347

The surge in reported incidents from 2008 is largely attributable to two factors. Firstly, there is an increased awareness of the need to report data loss across the Department. Secondly, since the publication of the Data Handling Review and Burton Report, the MOD is now auditing its holdings of both personal data and removable media. This has identified a number of instances where the location of data could not be verified and has therefore been reported as a possible loss—even though in many cases they may have merely been unaccounted for or incorrectly disposed of.

Reported incidents of the loss of confidential data in each of the last 12 months
Month	Total
2009
March	10
April	34
May	24
June	19
July	20
August	32
September	94
October	25
November	21
December	65
2010
January	23
February	48

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

508 c1506-8W; 321731

Session

2009-10

Subjects

Data protection Ministry of Defence

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk