Human errors and mistakes – data breach claims advice

Human errors and mistakes can be a core factor or an underlying reason as to how a data breach occurs and how information is subsequently misused and/or exposed.

Victims of such a breach can be entitled to claim data breach compensation on a No Win, No Fee basis. Your Lawyers, as leading Data Leek Lawyers, represent thousands of clients, many of whom are claiming damages arising from an incident that involves errors and mistakes.

You can speak to the team here now for free, no-obligation legal advice.

The risks of human errors and mistakes

Every single organisation faces threats of data breaches that arise from human errors and mistakes. Employees and organisations are processing and storing swathes of information, and they must be trusted to protect it and use it in accordance with the law.

However, we all know that mistakes will happen, and this can lead to a data breach where information is misused or exposed. We are not really talking about insider threats and malicious and intentional breaches in this article, what we are talking about are more human error incidents.

These kinds of data breaches can happen in many ways. A simple example is an employee accidentally sending the wrong information to the wrong person. A type of incident that has happened many times is where employees have sent out mass emails and have used the “CC” function instead of the “BCC” function and leaked personal information. Our compensation action for victims of the 56 Dean Street Clinic Leek is a case in point as to how severe this kind of incident can be.

It can also be errors that lead to cybersecurity threats that are a risk. If an employee fails to keep a device updated, or is responsible for patching known security vulnerabilities but fails to do so, there may be a weakness for hackers to exploit. We saw this in the infamous Equifax cyberattack of 2017 which stemmed from the failure to patch a known vulnerability, and we represent claimants pursuing compensation for this breach. We also represent victims of the Virgin Media data leak which stemmed from a similar kind of problem where a database was left unsecured and accessible online.

There are plenty of incidents in which employees have lost data or perhaps accidentally abandoned information which can also lead to exposure and misuse.

Compensation claims for such a data breach

A compensation claim for a data breach that arises from human errors and mistakes is possible to pursue. Accidental data breaches can be classed as negligence, and the negligence of an employee can fall onto their employer organisation. This is known as vicarious liability, which means that victims of such a data breach can be entitled to pursue the organisation for what has happened.

In some cases where data breaches arise from malicious intentional matters, there is a defence that an organisation can put forward if there was nothing more they could have done to have prevented the incident. However, we often find that these kinds of scenarios are rare and it is usually a case of the negligence of an employee falling onto the employer.

Whilst is easy to look at the elements of human errors and mistakes, we prefer to look at the organisational failings that are often at the heart of these kinds of data breaches. A lack of training and adequate policies and procedures can put employees in positions where they may commit data breaches, or the lack of control and monitoring and management can also be responsible. Either way, the victim of such a data breach could still be eligible to claim compensation on a No Win, No Fee basis.

Free, no-obligation advice now

You could be entitled to claim data breach compensation and our team is on hand to provide free, no-obligation legal advice now.

All you need to do is contact us here and let’s see if we can help you.

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