College data breach compensation claims advice

If you or your dependent has been the victim of a college data breach, you can be entitled to bring a claim for compensation for any distress and / or financial loss that has been caused.

Most students at college will be under 18, and in these circumstances, a parent or guardian can bring the case for them as their formal ‘Litigation Friend’. We can offer the same No Win, No Fee representation we can offer for other cases, and damages can be awarded for any impact to the victim. If you’re an employee, we can help you as well.

Here’s some advice if this is an issue that has affected you or someone that you know.

Claiming compensation for a college data breach

You can be entitled to make a claim for compensation as a victim of a college data breach, and the same goes for a sixth form incident as well.

Any organisation – no matter whether it’s public or private – must comply with important data laws, which these days is the GDPR. There’s a clear duty on organisations to protect the data that they store and process, and to ensure that their staff are trained to avoid leaks or breaches taking place.

Where an organisation fails in their duty to protect the data that they’re in charge of, a victim can be entitled to claim. When it comes to a data breach at a college, it could involve:

• Personal data about students and staff;
• Sensitive domestic and medical data that may be needed to meet the needs of certain students or employees;
• Financial data for employees;
• ID documentation.

This kind of information – in the wrong hand – could cause a great deal of damage and distress. When we assess data breach compensation amounts, we’ll take into account things like the nature and the extent of information misused or exposed, and how it has affected the victims.

Swindon College data breach

A recent example of an incident like this is the Swindon College data breach incident that reportedly stemmed from a cyber-attack. The police have been looking into the incident, with hundreds of current and former students and staff potentially affected when hackers were able to gain access to a network.

The incident was reported in September.

Given the nature of the information that can be exposed in this kind of incident, any unauthorised access event of networks could be serious. We could be talking about a wealth of information and documents that may have been exposed and stolen / copied.

Contacting our team

If you need advice about a college data breach, you can contact our team today for free, no-obligation advice about your options.

We’re usually open from 9am to 10pm on most weeknights, and 9am to 5pm on weekends to allow us to be as accessible as we can for you. We can usually tell you right away if we think you have a case, and if we can, we can offer our No Win, No Fee representation right away.

You shouldn’t be treated any differently when you make a claim, so pursuing compensation in these kinds of circumstances is a right in law that you’re free to exercise. As your representatives, we can do all the legwork for you and aim to get a swift resolution with a fair settlement as soon as we can.

The process is really quite simple in many cases.

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