Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment his Department has made of the potential implications for its policies of reports that US military emails have been misdirected to Mali .ML domain addresses; and whether his Department is aware of any e-mails originating from his Department being sent, forwarded or copied to .ML domain addresses in error.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is conducting an assessment of its email traffic with .ML domains. This involves understanding what emails were sent to .ML domains, and which of these might consist of any e-mails sent in error.

While all sensitive information is shared on systems which would prevent such misdirection, policies are put in place on all email systems to minimise the risk of such mistakes. On OFFICIAL systems, data loss prevention tools will prompt users who seek to send OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE information outside of Government domains, drawing attention to, and allowing the correction of, errors such as mistyped domain names.

Once the analysis of our email traffic is complete, we will consider what, if any, changes need to be made to MOD policies.