2020–2021 Alone Yielded £42M in Data Breach Fines. Learn How to Avoid These Penalties.

Prevent supervising authorities from issuing a penalty fine to your organisation by keeping your data processing secure and your staff aware.

Data security incidents are inevitable for any company. Whether you’re a NatWest employee frantically storing customer data under your bed, an Italian facial recognition firm scraping selfies off the internet to sell to a law enforcement agency, or a health charity erroneously sending an email with details of people living with HIV, penalty notices from supervising authorities can result in more than just financial repercussions. Reputational damage affects the trust and confidence one has in an organisation, and this can cost future clients and customers’ faith in an organisation’s ability to safeguard data and ensure it is complying with privacy responsibilities.

The key to successful data compliance comes from within an organisation’s DNA. To limit the vast amount of human errors that can lead to breaches of personal data, a cultural awareness of data protection and the processes required to ensure staff are aware of their GDPR obligations is essential. Training packages, workshops, e-learning, and conversations about privacy and storing data securely can go a long way to prevent glaring gaps in compliance, which ultimately lead to data being compromised—from ransomware attacks due to insufficient IT security, to general users not being careful when emailing personal information that includes special category data. Tiny changes—from locking a screen when leaving a workstation, choosing a sufficient password, refreshing in-house GDPR e-learning, and training staff of the implications of data breaches and how to report them—can all make a huge difference.

CTG offers a DPO as a Service solution and Table-Top Exercises for breaches and subject access requests. Through these services, we can support the nuances and changes needed for your business in order to ensure GDPR is being taken seriously and measures are appropriately implicated to avoid penalty or enforcement notices. From updating Records of Processing, revising a Data Protection Impact Assessment, or making full use of a DPO, we can identify and improve your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses when it comes to GDPR compliance, and suggest best practises and policies going forward.

And, perhaps that money spent on a penalty notice can be better spent elsewhere.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, data security incidents are unavoidable for most organizations—so understanding how to handle them once they do occur is essential. Learn more in my recent blog, “Data Breaches Are Inevitable—Ensure Your Organisation Can Properly Manage Them.”

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