The accounting officer for the Ministry of Defence has said that data losses and weaknesses in the department's information infrastructure has left it vulnerable to virtual attacks.In the MoD's resource accounts for 2009-2010, Bill Jeffrey says that although the department is working to improve awareness of potential online attacks, the risks to its cybersecurity is still a worry.
The department's Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system, which provides services including payroll functions and centralised records of service, is also singled out as a problem area by the accounting officer. He says that despite a number of steps being taken to improve the system, "there are still concerns over the quality of elements of the underlying data set".
"This has meant that we still have a number of unresolved issues to do with payments and visibility of data on the numbers of army reservists. As part of plans to address these, the army will be undertaking a major data cleansing exercise," Jeffrey concludes.
