So the company responsible for processing pay and pensions for the Metropolitan Police was burgled the other day and 3 laptops stolen, along with payroll details.

Thankfully it looks as if this was a bog standard commercial premises burglary and at least one person is helping police with their enquiries. There was no details on the state of the PCs (the laptops that is) and whether they had the data encrypted or secured on the hard disk.

Of more concern to the Met must be the fact that private details of officers could be used for all sorts of nefarious purposes, especially for officers deployed on sensitive operations. The involvement of the Specialist Crime Directorate should give you an idea how seriously the Met are taking this crime.

On another note I wonder if the laptops were secured with locking devices and what the state of the building security was...