ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on reports security, value attaches to many other things, such as plans, photographs and equipment, and also to parts of any of them, though all the parts are unlikely to have equal value. The normal British security gradings, in rising order of security, are 'Restricted', 'Confidential' and 'Secret'; and access to documents so marked has to be authorized by their originating authority or a delegated authority. In addition to the security gradings, reports may carry other protective markings or warnings which may indicate that they contain valuable commercial or proprietary information. Some of the documents in a large information centre will be the only known copies in the country or even in the world, so that they might be impossible to replace. When a classified document is downgraded the known recipients are informed, but with the passage of time documents issued to individuals may have been passed to the information centre for secure storage.
