London: Britains security may have been compromised with sensitive military information on its armed forces found to be missing.

Described as the "worst information security breach", Britains Ministry of Defence has initiated a high-level probe after a portable hard drive with details of about 100,000 servicemen and women and 800,000 applicants to join the Armed Services was found to be missing on Wednesday.

"The matter is being investigated by MoD police, an MoD spokeswoman said.

"We were informed by 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 spokeswoman was quoted as saying by the Times Online on Friday.

The Liberal Democrats described the loss as a "disturbing breach of security".

"This is extremely serious news and the immediate priority must be to ensure the security of all military personnel," said Nick Harvey, Liberal Democrat shadow defence secretary.

The report said the portable hard drive which is believed not to have been encrypted was used by EDS, the MoDs main IT contractor, to test computer equipment.

The missing drive is the latest information security breach to hit the MoD. In July it admitted 658 of its 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.

A report in August said that confidential records and sensitive intelligence on tens of thousands of dangerous criminals were lost.
Source : DNA