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Data breaches are costly: not just financially but they impact seriously on consumer confidence

Data breaches have become the talk of the town in the privacy world for decades. The apparent lax attitude of some companies and organisations appears to have resulted in data breach costs soaring.

The 2016 Cost of Data Breach Study, undertaken by Ponemon and IBM, found that the average total cost of a data breach increased from £2.37 million in 2014 to £2.53 million in 2015.

And we can only see it growing and growing…
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Gloucester City Council fined £100,000 for “allowing” Heartbleed cyber-attack

Gloucester City Council have let down employees after cyber-attackers accessed their personal details. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has imposed a monetary penalty of £100,000 for their reportedly lax attitude.

On 7^th April 2014, there was the vulnerability known as ‘Heartbleed’ which gathered huge media attention. The vulnerability was quickly addressed as the affected software (‘OpenSSL’) was released which fixed the vulnerability. Unfortunately, the vulnerability was overlooked as Gloucester City Council was in the process of outsourcing its IT services to a third party company on 1^st May 2014.
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Indiana Medicaid data breach may affect an “undisclosed” number of patients

Medicaid was started in the U.S to help families and individuals who struggle to pay for medical care. The social healthcare program is run by the government and provides financially limited people with free health insurance.

As we know, organisations like this are just as vulnerable as others to data breaches, data leaks, and cyber hacks.

In this instance, patient data was reportedly accidentally made live through a hyperlink (internet web link). The hyperlink was publicly accessible, meaning anyone who clicked on it could see the medical information contained on it.
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2017: The year of the healthcare data breaches!

Health data breaches have seen an unprecedented rise in recent times. Overwhelmed and untrained healthcare administrators appear to be making simple errors in some cases, and as a result, millions of people are at risk of their personal information being released.

On top of this, cyber criminals are targeting hospitals, GP practices and University health research facilities to steal and hold medical data for ransom. In the ever-advancing digital world, our cyber security measures are failing to keep up, and it seems like the healthcare sector still remains way off the mark.
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Recent ICO data security incident trends

A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential data by, say, employees, cyber-hackers, political activists or national governments.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the U.K.’s independent privacy watchdog who have the responsibility of upholding information rights for the benefit of the public interest. Though there isn’t a legal responsibility on companies and/or organisations to report all data security breaches, it’s considered good practice to do so.

Here’s a look at some of the recent data security incident trends from the ICO.
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Morrisons fined £10,500 for breaching data privacy rights

The 4^th largest supermarket chain in the U.K. has been fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office (‘ICO’) for breaking data protection laws in regards to how personal information is being used when sending marketing emails.

The ICO undertook an investigation into the supermarket chain after allegations were made by an individual that WM Morrison Supermarkets PLC (‘Morrisons’) were sending emails that customers had previously opted out of.

The Commissioner wrote to Morrisons on 28^th November 2016 notifying them of the complaint made against them.
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AA fails to notify their customers of data breach

Further to the AA data breach that occurred on 22^nd April 2017, there’s been further backlash as AA reportedly failed to notify customers of the breach.

The personal information that was breached related to customers of the AA’s online shop, operated by a third party, which sells maps, car accessories and other products to retailers and individuals.

Due to a server malfunction, personal data stored on two database backup files was accessible to the public.
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Health insurance company in the U.S. pays out a record $115 million after millions had personal data hacked

The U.S.’s second largest health insurance company, Anthem Inc, has agreed to pay out a record-breaking settlement over a huge data breach from two years ago.

Around 79 million people had their personal information compromised during the hack, and it’s safe to say Anthem are paying for their mistakes given the settlement. Data breach victims include current and former clients, and it’s thought that lawyers will need to sift through a lot of information to pinpoint exactly who was affected, how much data was compromised, and the impact the breach had on them.
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Growth in settlements for data breaches

Data protection laws around the world have allowed victims of serious data breaches to claim the compensation they rightfully deserve. As the number of data breaches seems to continually be on the rise, we’re seeing some huge settlements for breaches amongst cases where data has potentially been exposed forever.

The growth in data breach settlements may well continue to rise as well unless organsations get the vital grip they need on securing their servers and protecting the data they hold.
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Inquiry launched over University of East Anglia data leak blunder

The University of East Anglia (UEA) are facing an investigation over the shocking data breach that saw a number of students have their personal circumstances emailed directly to hundreds of fellow course mates.

The document listed extenuating circumstances of a number of students explaining why certain students were authorised to have an extension on assignments, postpone exams and take time off their course.

Some of the reasons included death or a family member, personal medical and mental health issues, and even sexual assault.
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