Welcome to the October 2015 Newsletter.
I see that the Information Commissioners Office has received a record number of complaints from individuals concerned that their personal data is not being kept sufficiently secure by businesses and other organisations.

According to new figures obtained by international law firm Pinsent Masons, reports to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) relating to the security of personal information jumped to 1,150 in 2014 - or more than two complaints a day on average - representing a 30% increase on the 886 complaints received the previous year.

Pinsent Masons points to how high-profile attacks on trusted corporations like Sony and Target, and the recent damaging attack on infidelity site Ashley Madison, have raised public awareness about how personal data is treated.

Under the Data Protection Act, businesses can be fined up to £500,000 by the ICO, if the regulator finds that the company has failed to take appropriate measures to protect customer information, and the financial penalties can far exceed this, if the individuals compromised opt to take legal action against the business.

"We're definitely seeing the cyber-attack threat moving up the corporate food chain to being a C-suite issue," adds Luke Scanlon, technology lawyer at Pinsent Masons. "Nobody wants to be the one who gets hit and many bluechips are now role-playing what happens in that scenario. There is increasing recognition that how an organisation responds to the compromise of customer data can impact its long-term prospects as deeply as the incident itself."
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Brian Wall, Editor
Computing Security

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