Tag: data breach

GDPR accountability – you’re accountable, aren’t you?

GDPR rules are an ongoing responsibility and every organisation remains accountable for creating an appropriate GDPR environment.

GDPR accountability is for life, not just for May 2018. Now the rules and regulations are firmly settled in don’t forget that every organisation remains responsible for creating an appropriate GDPR environment.

What might this mean in the real world? Our GDPR expert, Karen Heaton, takes a look at Accountability.

In our blog today, we look at Accountability, one of the Seven Principles of GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

What is accountability?

Accountability is your requirement to demonstrate how your organisation or practice is compliant with the regulations.

This sounds simple, but what does it really mean?  If ever audited or investigated, what would you show the investigators?

Let’s take a look at the route to Data Protection compliance and some essential measures that organisations should have in place to meet this requirement.

What is the minimum you might need to meet the Accountability requirements?

  1. Ensure your employees have some training in Data Protection – this is the responsibility of the Controller
    • We discussed the causes of Data Breaches, 30% – 40% are due to employees
  2. Do you know what data you hold? We discussed Know Your Data (KYD) in our blog on Data Breaches
    • why you have that data
    • what you do with it
    • who sees it
    • where it is kept
  3. Understand Your role – this determines what your responsibilities are
    • are a Data Controller, Data Processor or both (highly likely)
  4. Have essential operational policies and procedures (measures) in place to deal with:
    • Data breaches
    • Subject Access requests
    • Management of consent
  5. Have you communicated your Privacy Notices to clients, employees, suppliers?
  6. Do you need to Register with the Information Commissioners Office (probably)?
    • Use the checklist from the ICO
    • The fees are explained here – for small and medium companies the fee is £52 and £78.
  7. Decide who will be responsible for Data Protection within your organisation – it must be someone!

 

Today’s fact: 

The ICO use a number of factors to decide what fines (or other actions) to take against organisations.  In fact, when submitting Data Breach information to the ICO, organisations must answer questions about staff training and the operational measures that were in place to prevent breaches.

  • Put the essential operational measures in place now to avoid issues in the future.

See you next week!

GDPR – what to do if you have a data breach

What exactly constitutes a reportable data breach? Whose responsibility is it to report it?

Despite your best efforts with GDPR your business might suffer a data breach.

It’s probably not the end of the world but in this blog data protection expert, Karen Heaton, explains what happens next.

We have discussed in our previous blog the potential level of fines for data breaches and some common causes of these breaches.

Our blog today, answers the questions of: what exactly constitutes a reportable data breach?  Whose responsibility is it to report it?

We will look at guidance from the European Data Protection Board on examples of data breaches and whether to report them to, the data subject/s or the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

What constitutes a data breach?

Data Breach Definition – defined in the GDPR Article 4(12) as:

“a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed”

What this means in practice is that all data breaches are security failures, but not all security failures are data breaches.  And… not all data breaches have to be reported to either (or both) the data subject/s or ICO.

 

So, how do you know what to report or not?  Have you had a breach?  How would you know?

Examples of how you may identify a data breach

  • Employee loses a bag, phone, USB stick
  • Monitoring software identifies unauthorised access to an account or file
  • Large attachments are sent in outgoing emails to an employee’s private email account
  • A supplier (data processor) tells us that they have had a cyber-attack and data has been compromised
  • A client phones to say they have received an odd email from your company asking for bank details for an unexpected refund

Assessing a breach for reporting

When assessing a security incident, the Data Controller should:

a) assess whether the security incident has or is likely to, result in a loss of personal data and then

b) decide whether that breach is likely to result in or will result in a high risk to the Data Subject.

Of course, this depends on the type, volume or subject matter of the data.

Each breach will have its own unique characteristics depending on the organisation and data affected.  See the full list of guidance from the European Data Protection Board here.

 

 

How to report a data breach

It is the responsibility of the Data Controller to assess, resolve and report data breaches.  Any suppliers (Data Processors) who are involved in the incident must assist the Data Controller in the investigation and provide fixes where appropriate.   Therefore, it is important to Know Your Data (KYD) and ensure that you understand your responsibilities in each potential scenario.

  • Once the Data Controller has assessed that the data breach is likely to result in a high risk to the data subjects he/she must report the breach to the ICO within 72 hours of becoming aware of the breach which requires to be reported.
  • The Data Controller must then decide how and when to notify the data subjects affected. It is essential to have an operational process or plan for staff to follow.

 

Today’s fact.  Did you know that the ICO’s website lists organisations who have or are being audited in addition to lists organisations being monitored for concerns about compliance??

 

=> Take your data protection responsibilities seriously, know your data (KYD) and be operationally compliant to avoid the reputational damage from your company name being listed on the ICO website.

See you next week!