Skip to main content

UK’s Ministry of Defence loses a ton of tech

From time to time, employees lose company laptops, accidentally leaving them in a bar or on a train. USB sticks go missing too, slipping out of pockets or sliding down the back of sofas, never to be seen again. And of course, some equipment gets stolen.

Workers at the UK’s Ministry of Defence, however, appear to be a particularly lax bunch, having lost possession of 287 computers, 72 hard disks, 73 USB sticks, 28 mobile phones and 194 CDs and DVDs in the last 18 months alone.

If this happened in any government department it would be bad enough, but the fact that it’s the Ministry of Defence, which of course deals with highly sensitive information, is sure to raise eyebrows among the British public.

The UK’s under-secretary of state for defence Andrew Robathan said that in Germany 21 laptops were stolen in a single incident. Another 20 laptops went missing in another incident but were later recovered.

Radios, 3G cards and cameras have also gone missing since the Conservative-led coalition government took office in 2009.

Robathan tried to calm fears that confidential material on the computers and storage devices could be accessed, saying that all data was encrypted.

In a parliamentary written answer, Robathan said, “The MoD [Ministry of Defence] takes any loss and theft of communications and information systems and associated media storage devices very seriously. We have robust procedures in place to mitigate against such occurrences and to manage such losses when they do occur.”

He goes on to say that with a global workforce of more than a quarter of a million individuals and with devices being frequently on the move, “it is almost inevitable that equipment will go missing.”

Despite constant reviews of “processes, instructions and technological aids” to prevent the losses, it seems the MoD has made little progress in getting on top of the situation – a report in 2008 said that over a four-year period more than 700 laptops had been lost or stolen at the MoD.

[Source: Daily Mail] [Image: bodhihillillustration / Shutterstock]

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
The 5 best websites like Craigslist in 2024

For years, Craigslist has been the go-to website for scoring a free sofa or finding an apartment. But there are plenty of other alternatives to Craigslist that do an equally fine job, oftentimes with a more attractive interface and fewer spam postings. The 5 best Craigslist alternatives are:

Facebook Marketplace
OfferUp
Locanto
Mercari
Recycler

Read more
How to stop spam emails in Outlook, Gmail, and more
A person sitting on the grass and taking notes at a laptop.

Spam and other unwanted emails are a nuisance, and it can seem like keeping them away from your inbox is a losing battle. But while you won't be able to prevent every piece of spam from landing in your inbox, it is possible to significantly reduce the number of messages that show up.

In this guide, we'll show you how to use filters, blocking, and spam reporting features to help stop spam from invading your inbox. We'll also go over a few more tips on how to reduce unwanted messages overall.
How to stop spam in Gmail
If you use Gmail, the most popular email client, you will eventually start getting spam. Here are our two favorite ways to deal with it.
Block spam in Gmail

Read more
How to add a signature in Gmail on desktop and mobile
how to file for stimulus

Email signatures are a great way to automatically include your contact information to your email correspondence. If you'd like to add a signature to your emails in Gmail, it's easy enough to add one. You'll just need to go through your Gmail settings to do it.

In this guide, we'll show you how to add a signature in Gmail whether you're using the desktop website version of Gmail or its mobile app.
How to add a signature on your desktop
Step 1: Launch your favorite browser and log into your Gmail account as you normally would.

Read more