REPORTS of data and cyber security incidents have risen by a fifth in a year, with fears expressed that sweeping new pan-European privacy rules could be ditched after Brexit.
The General Data Protection Regulation, which will come into force next year, will introduce a raft of changes and protections for all companies that have EU customers.
Val Surgenor, IP and technology partner at the Scottish law firm MacRoberts warned: “Any significant watering down of the [GDPR] rules could potential harm UK organisations seeking to trade in Europe.”
According to the latest figures there were 1143 reports of data security and cyber security incidents to the Information Commissioner’s Office in the six months to September, 2016 – nearly 200 more than the same period in 2015.
Privacy breaches in the health sector made up around half of all reports.
One-in-ten alleged breaches were in local government, while 9.5 per cent of complaints were from business.
The first Europe-wide shake-up of data protection laws in 20 years will require companies that process over 5,000 data subject records each year, or employ over 250 employees, to appoint a data protection officer. Firms will be required to disclose incidents within 72 hours to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Fines of up to €20 million or four per cent of a company’s worldwide revenue can be dished out if an ICO investigation finds appropriate organisation or technical controls have not been put in place.
In February, last year, research from KPMG and Cyber Streetwise revealed that Scottish small businesses are the least likely of any across the UK to have taken steps to protect their data.
Many small businesses north of the border were “unprepared and unconcerned” when it comes to cyber-attacks.
One in five (19 per cent) Scottish-based small businesses and consumers who responded to the UK-wide survey admitted that they have failed to take any steps to protect their data.
Surgenor said: “Currently there is no legal requirement to report a data breach in the UK, with the exception of certain telecoms and Internet service providers, and therefore it is difficult to truly gauge the full extent of the problem, although I am sure there is a problem.”
The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has warned that UK businesses could face up to £122bn in penalties for data breaches when new EU legislation comes into effect in 2018.
According to a UK government 2015 information security breaches survey 90% of large organisations and 74% of small to medium-sized companies reported a security breach, leading to an estimated total of £1.4bn in regulatory fines.
This means that if data breaches remain at 2015 levels, the fines paid to the European regulator could see a near 90-fold increase, from £1.4bn in 2015, the PCI SSC calculated, based on the maximum fine of 4% of global turnover.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel