In the last year the issues around data loss and security have rapidly moved into the public arena. The Data Protection Act was introduced in 1998 to provide businesses with a set of guidelines to ensure that data is handled safely and securely. Covering everything from data processing to security, the Data Protection Act is extremely far reaching and has been interpreted and implemented in a variety of different ways by each country within the EU.
Given this wide scope and varied implementation it has become a near impossible task for regulatory bodies, such as the Information Commission in the UK, to track how businesses are handling their data. In order to rectify this situation a stronger onus has to be placed on businesses themselves to monitor, evaluate and assess their own data management and security.
Most organisations strive to make certain that they are compliant with legal policies which ensure the safe handling of sensitive information, yet many fail to take into account the threat resulting from their own employees’ practices, whether that be malicious or simply human error.
So, while companies should, at the very least, employ a basic risk management strategy and implement policies and technology to safeguard data from external attack, the harsh reality is that corporate data can easily end up in the wrong hands due to employee error or malpractice. Therefore, protecting against external threats alone, or even prioritising them over the threat from within, simply isn’t enough.
The impact of data loss caused by employee error is apparent across Europe, causing huge public outcry and often with enormous political and social implications.
A recent high profile case was the Ferrari espionage scandal in September 2007. In the UK, data loss has been a cause for significant public unease over the last two years, with the surfacing of a series of large-scale data security disasters caused by human error. In 2006, high street clothes retailer TK Maxx, lost credit card details belonging to thousands of their customers. In 2007 the issue of data loss was again brought to the nation’s attention when a junior official in the British Government department responsible for collecting taxes, HM Revenue and Customs, lost a CD containing unencrypted personal data about thousands of Britons. Last year in the Netherlands, an official in the Dutch Foreign Ministry lost a USB stick containing secret entrance codes to the home of a Dutch diplomat and the names of all the guards who had accompanied the Prime Minister on a recent trip to Poland.
For companies, the impact of data loss can be extremely serious. A company’s business and brand reputation can be severely damaged and it can even lead to legal action if the business is in breach of regulations such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GBLA) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).
In 2007, Ernst & Young and Nationwide all suffered reputational challenges when the social security numbers, names and address of thousands of employees and customers were left open to identity fraud after unencrypted laptops were stolen from the homes and cars of the workforce.
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