A disk which a tabloid said carries personal details on some 100,000 serving British military personnel is lost, the Ministry of Defense said Friday.

The military acknowledged a report in The Sun newspaper that contractor EDS lost track of a portable hard drive, but said it could not comment on the claim that it restricted names, addresses, passport numbers and driver’s license data of service personnel along with documents on 600,000 potential recruits.

“We don’t know what’s on it, and we don’t even know whether there’s anything on it,” a ministry of defense spokesman said, speaking anonymously in line with military policy.

A government mandated notes protection review was unable to explanation for the disk, according to EDS UK, the British subsidiary of Plano, Texas-based EDS. It said the disk was being stored at its secure facility in Hook, a town about 45 miles west of London when it went lost.

EDS refused to say whether the disk was encrypted.

The military said it was investigating the incident, which it said became known earlier that week.

The loss is one in a series of data breaches at the ministry. Last month it said a disk carrying sensitive personnel knowledge was stolen from a military base. Earlier that year the military said a laptop with details of 600,000 new and prospective recruits was stolen.

The British government has struggled to get a handle on goods losses even as it rolls out an ambitious national identification card program. Last year’s loss of computer disks containing knowledge — including banking records — on nearly half the U.K. population caught worldly attention, and a steady stream of info blunders since soon after has kept the spotlight on the way the government stores and handles goods.

EDS, an knowledge technology company, has worked on a range of British government projects, including providing support for…

[Source] dhiram