Today in The Herald, Ian Bruce reported that the Ministry of Defence admitted to having lost 217 laptops, 47 desktop computers, 80 hard drives and 96 memory sticks in 2008.

The article states that the devices held “private information about almost half of serving armed forces personnel – including bank and driving licence details, passport numbers, addresses, dates of birth and telephone numbers.”

The devices contained the details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF, plus those of their family members.

Despite a security crackdown in June of 2008, a Ministry of Defence spokesperson now declared that technological security is a “top priority.” He added, “We have already encrypted 20,000 laptops that were not previously protected to the level required by current MoD and government policy.”

Though now over 20,000 laptops are well-protected, the fact remains that 217 laptops have already been lost or stolen, with untold amounts of valuable information contained on them.

It would be wise for the Ministry of Defence to employ a laptop tracking system such as MyLaptopGPS to protect from future theft.