University cyber breach compensation

You can be entitled to make a claim for compensation if you have been the victim of a university cyber breach and your data has been misused or exposed.

It’s important to remember that higher education facilities like universities hold a wealth of information about a lot of people. It can include the usual personal information as well as financial data for fees, and medical and domestic data to ensure that the needs to students are met. When it comes to mitigating circumstances, the information that could be held for students can include some incredibly personal and sensitive information.

Universities can also be a major target for cyber criminals because of the research data that they hold. The information for students and employees can easily get caught up in such an attack as well.

Can you claim for a university cyber breach?

If your information has been misused or exposed as a result of a university cyber breach, you can be entitled to make a claim for data breach compensation.

If the exposure was reasonably preventable, you may have a strong case. GDPR puts a clear duty on all organisations to protect the data that they store and process, so there’s no excuse for allowing poor security to expose valuable data.

When we look to take a case forward and offer our No Win, No Fee representation, we can look at thing such as:

• How the data was exposed;
• What measures were in place to protect data (if any);
• Whether data was encrypted or not, and therefore whether exposed information was only partial data.

You may also be able to claim where information is leaked online as well. In this kind of case, establishing that the university is at fault can be easier as this kind of leak will usually stem from some form of error.

The University of Greenwich data leak from a few years back where sensitive data had been accidentally available online is a good example of an action we took forward for this kind of cyber leak.

What can you claim for?

There are a number of things that we can look at when we assess the potential value of a compensation claim that arises from a university cyber breach.

Data breach compensation pay-outs are typically based on the extent of information involved, and how this has impacted you.

We can look at things such as:

• How much information is involved;
• What kind of data is involved – medical information can be seen as more sensitive as one example;
• Who the data has been exposed to, or misused by – the greater the exposure, the more a case could be worth.

Any financial losses can also be included as well. This may include money lost directly from hacked accounts, or where fraud has stemmed from a cyber breach.

Importantly, you don’t have to have suffered a financial loss to be able to make a claim as a legal case can be based on the distress that has been caused alone.

What to do

If you have been the victim of a university cyber breach, make sure you speak to our team today about your rights.

We’re taking cases forward for the recent Lancaster University data breach as well any others where your data has been exposed or misused.

School GDPR breach incidents won’t go unpunished

BA data breach class action information