STOCKHOLM, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven called a leak of confidential information from Sweden's transport authority a "total breakdown" and "illegal" in a press conference held Monday afternoon in the government offices Rosenbad.
Confidential information, including the country's driver's license registry with photos, as well as sensitive information about bridges, subways, roads and ports in Sweden, was available to IT personnel working in the Czech Republic and Serbia through an outsourcing agreement between Sweden's Transport Agency and global IT company IBM, Swedish public television broadcaster SVT reports.
Lofven said he first learned of the breach in January.
SVT reported that in 2015 the Transport Agency decided to outsource the management of its vehicle and drivers' license registers to IBM. The databases also contain information about police and military vehicles, as well as data on anybody who has a driver's license.
In 2015, IBM decided to place the IT administration in eastern Europe, giving personnel who have no security clearance access to sensitive information, SVT reports.
"What has happened is a total breakdown, very serious, and against the law," Lofven said in the press conference.
He was joined by Anders Thornberg, head of the Swedish Security Service, Micael Byden, supreme commander of the Swedish Armed Forces and Jonas Bjelfvenstam, the Transport Agency's new director general.
Lofven said the government was considering a new security law proposing stricter rules for outsourcing, which would go into effect in January 2019. The PM also said that outsourcing agreements would be vetted by the Constitution Committee.
Byden said the incident was "serious" but did not affect Sweden's defense capabilities.
He added that most of the information from the Swedish Armed Forces' vehicle database was not in the Transport Agency's system, but noted that the information in the wrong hands could pose a potential risk.
The former director general of Sweden's Transport Agency Maria Agren bypassed several laws designed to protect sensitive information to go ahead with the outsourcing agreement with IBM, according to the SVT reports. Agren was fired in January.
