Incident Trends for Data Protection Breaches

The Information Commissioners Office has published the list of ways in which personal data has been inadvertently disclosed over the last quarter. This is based on the information received by the ICO. There are undoubtedly a significant number of breaches which are never disclosed to the ICO but those that are show a definite trend.

The graph below is reproduced from the ICO website. Here's the link to the full page https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/data-security-incident-trends/
 

Top of the incidents reported is sending an email to the wrong person. Surprisingly this is followed by information being posted or faxed to the wrong person. In contrast, providing personal information verbally to the wrong person is quite low. Is this because we are more sceptical about providing information over the phone or in person to someone? The training provided by companies often focusses on this area and that may also be why this figure is so low.

The above list should be an indication to all organisations of the key areas where there is scope for losing personal information, so what steps do you have in place to make sure that information is not leaked or disclosed from your organisation in the same ways?

Who is letting your organisation down?

There have been a number of high profile data breaches by members of staff in organisations.

From the disgruntled Morrison's employee who leaked the salaries of staff onto the internet and was subsequently jailed for 8 years to the Tesco employee who was emailing details of customers to his personal email account and the Enterprise car rental employee who was selling customer information to a claims company, the main weaknesses in most organisations are the staff.

So what do you do about it? The cases shown above have been high profile and widely reported but organisations are probably suffering breaches on a regular basis and may not even be aware of them. We get used to what we see and do and so often we forgot to stand back and view the situation with fresh eyes. 

When I start to work with organisations, I am that fresh pair of eyes. I often also represent your clients. Are you collecting information to help you communicate effectively with them? We can easily identify the areas in your business where there is potential for losing your business information.

If you want to find out  more, we offer a free initial consultation so you can see how we would work with you. Contact us today to book a meeting.