With data breaches in the UK increasing by 46% year on year and over 80% of UK businesses falling victim to a successful attack this costs the UK economy £3.1bn between April ’21 and April ’22. This also resulted in ICO fines of £44m being collected against...
It is almost four and a half years since the GDPR became enforced in May of 2018. Since that date, when the world went mad over consent, subscriptions and other connection requests that most of the requestors ignored, we have had Harry and Megan, Brexit, Covid-19 and...
Utility supplier People’s Energy has had its entire customer list stolen. All 270,000 customers of People’s Energy, a renewable energy start-up, have had their details compromised in a major data breach incident that occurred last week, on 16th December 2020....
Nursing home fined for a data breach after a laptop with residents' details is stolen A nursing home in County Antrim has been fined £15,000 for failing to adequately protect sensitive data about its staff and residents. This story is a look back in history but...
4 of the 5 top causes of data breaches are because of human or process errors Although data breaches as a result of cyber-attacks get all the press, it is often negligence or a lack of basic processes, policies and procedures that result in data breaches. The...
The Austrian regulator has issued its first fine for a GDPR violation. In this case, it was for a CCTV breach. This decision by the regulator, namely the Austrian Data Protection Authority ("DSB"), is particularly interesting. The Austrian Data Protection Act...
Estate agency fined £80,000 for failing to keep tenants’ data safe. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined a London estate agency £80,000 for leaving 18,610 customers' personal data exposed for almost two years. The security breach happened at...
A former GP surgery secretary has been fined for reading medical records of 231 patients in two years, the ICO reported in 2018. A trip back in time to November of 2018 for this blog. We shouldn't forget that whilst this story may have a few cobwebs on it, this could...
The Danish data protection authority ('Datatilsynet') announced, on 20th August 2020, that it had itself suffered a personal data breach. The breach was the discovery of its paper waste containing confidential and sensitive information about citizens and employees....
GDPR Data Breach Support Service Identifying a data breach under the GDPR is not easy and you must fully understand it in order to remedy and report. How do you follow the process for GDPR breach reporting? Therefore, you need to who has been affected? What is the...
Identifying a data breach under the GDPR - who has been affected, how extensive it is and how it happened – within 72 hours can pose a challenge for any business. With the threat of a data breach becoming increasingly imminent, it’s vital that your organisation is...
Perhaps as many as 4,000 users affected Howard Freeman – 4th March 2019 Parenting website Mumsnet has revealed that a data breach occurred during a software update. This happened between 5th and 7th February,...
Howard Freeman – 1st March 2019 A worrying rise in data breaches being reported across the UK education sector was revealed by a recent freedom of information request.  The EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) mandates data breaches must...
We are often asked about data breaches and the damage they can and do cause. The way to limit such damage is to spot them quickly or to stop them happening in the first place. This is not easy to do but here are some practical tips to help you stay safe and we look at...
The Consequences of Data Breaches for all Sizes of Organisations Data breaches can happen to any business. Incidents at large organisations – such as Dixons Carphone, Superdrug and most recently BA, all hit the headlines. This would give anyone the impression that...
Why you should educate your employees on email misuse Yet another example of an email misuse using the CC (carbon copy) field instead of the BCC (blind carbon copy) field. This time, it was Premiership side West Ham United Football...