Legacy systems blamed as ministers promise no repeat of Afghan breach

UK ministers told Parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee that legacy IT complicates replacing email-based sharing with safer methods following the MoD’s Afghan data leak; while departments on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 can share internally without attachments, cross-department and arm’s-length bodies face hurdles. Officials cited a 90% compliance rate from an Oct 2025 assurance exercise and said roughly 13.5 of 14 security recommendations are implemented, but withheld granular RAG ratings for security reasons, drawing calls for more transparency.