Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs written question – answered at on 8 November 2011.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether his Department has lost any (a) computers, (b) mobile telephones, (c) BlackBerrys and (d) other IT equipment since May 2010; and if he will make a statement.
Official items lost, stolen or damaged are all recorded as “losses”. Information is only available for the period since August 2010 without incurring disproportionate cost. Information on the number of mobile telephones lost is not held centrally and can be obtained only at disproportionate cost. Since August 2010, 28 computers, including laptops (12 of these were in the UK and the other 16 were at one of our 260 posts overseas) and 37 BlackBerrys (15 of these were in the UK and the other 22 were at one of our 260 posts overseas) have been lost, stolen or damaged.
All Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) computers, including laptops, and BlackBerrys are encrypted and password protected; and all BlackBerrys that are registered as lost or stolen are blocked remotely, making it impossible for them to be used. The FCO implements security incident management procedures to ensure that the impacts of incidents are risk managed and investigations are undertaken to seek, where possible, to retrieve lost/stolen assets.
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