Tag: Data Breach

Post Office Reprimand Following Horizon Data Breach 

You would think that the Post Office has learnt its lessons from the Horizon IT Scandal. And of course it would have taken extra care to ensure that the victims of the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice are not further harmed by their actions in dealing with the aftermath. Not so, judging by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announcement on Tuesday.  

The ICO has issued a reprimand to Post Office Limited following an ‘entirely preventable’ data breach which resulted in the unauthorised disclosure of personal data belonging to hundreds of postmasters who were the victims of the Horizon IT scandal.  The breach occurred when the Post Office’s communications team mistakenly published an unredacted version of a legal settlement document on its corporate website. The document contained the names, home addresses and postmaster status of 502 people who were part of group litigation against the organisation. The document remained publicly accessible for almost two months in 2024, before being removed following notification from an external law firm. 

During its investigation, the ICO found that the Post Office failed to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect people’s personal data. There was a lack of documented policies or quality assurance processes for publishing documents on the Post Office website, as well as insufficient staff training, with no specific guidance on information sensitivity or publishing practices.  

In the ‘gold old days’ such a data breach would have attracted a substantial fine; especially considering the impact on the victims described by their lawyers (‘the shock and anxiety of this incident cannot help but compound all of the adverse harms suffered by our clients as a result of the wider Horizon scandal’.) Remember when the ICO fined the Cabinet Office £500,000 for disclosing postal addresses of the 2020 New Year Honours recipients online? 

 But we are in a new age of GDPR ‘enforcement’! The ICO says it had initially considered imposing a fine of up to £1.094 million on the Post Office Limited. However, it did not consider that the data protection infringements identified reached the threshold of ‘egregious’ under its public sector approach, and a reprimand has been issued instead. This approach, which was extended recently after a two year trial,  ‘prioritises early engagement and other enforcement tools such as warnings, reprimands, and enforcement notices, while issuing fines for only the most egregious breaches in the public sector’ so says the ICO. Not everyone agrees. The law firm, Handley Gill, has just published an analysis of the ICO’s public sector approach trial and the new version of it, essentially concluding that reprimands unaccompanied by enforcement notices won’t achieve the stated objective of driving up data protection standards in the public sector. 

The ICO highlights the following key lessons from this reprimand: 

  • Establish clear publication protocols: Sensitive documents should go through a formal review and approval process before being published online. A multi-step sign-off process can help prevent errors. 
  • Understand the data you handle: Every team, especially those handling public-facing content, must be trained to recognise personal information and assess its sensitivity in context. This includes understanding the reputational and emotional impact of disclosure. 
  • Centralise and classify documents: Use secure, shared repositories with clear access controls and classification labels. Avoid reliance on personal storage systems such as OneDrive and Google Drive. 
  • Define roles and responsibilities: Ensure that everyone involved in publishing content understands their role and the checks required before publication. 
  • Tailor training to the task: General data protection training is not enough. Teams need specific guidance on publishing protocols, data classification, and risk awareness.  

This and other data protection developments will be discussed in detail on our forthcoming  GDPR Update workshop. The new (2nd) edition of the UK GDPR Handbook has been published. It contains all the changes made by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. 

Retail Under Siege Through AI Enabled Cyber Attacks 

The UK retail sector has come under siege in 2025, with an unprecedented wave of cyber attacks. After the Ticketmaster breach in 2024 where millions of users were affected, one would assume retailers had taken note. However, From Marks & Spencer to Louis Vuitton, companies large and small are grappling with relentless, tech-enhanced intrusions that threaten customer trust and digital resilience. It’s almost a daily occurrence these days receiving an email from a company apologising for a data breach. There also seems to be no retailer safe regardless of their size or stature. Sometimes it is a retailer that you may not have even shopped with for a number of years at which point I’m sure you must be thinking, ‘What’s their data retention policy?’ 
 
Below we take a look at some of the major breaches and attacks of 2025 and what you can do to protect your information online. 

High-Profile Retail Cyberattacks of 2025 

Here’s a snapshot of the most disruptive recent cyber incidents: 

Company Date Attack Type Impact & Highlights 
Louis Vuitton UK July 2025 Data breach Customer contact details & purchase history stolen; phishing scams followed 
Marks & Spencer April 2025 Ransomware £3.8M/day in lost revenue; £700M market value wiped; credential theft via vendor 
Harrods May 2025 Attempted breach Real-time containment; no confirmed data loss but serious operational disruption 
Co-op UK May 2025 Ransomware Customer data compromised; back-office systems disabled 
Peter Green Chilled May 2025 Ransomware Disrupted cold-chain deliveries to Tesco, Aldi, Waitrose 
Victoria’s Secret Spring 2025 Web attack E-commerce platform outage during peak shopping period 

These incidents underscore one clear truth: cybercrime is evolving, and no retailer, no matter its size or prestige, is immune. What is worrying is, companies with infinite resources are still extremely vulnerable. 

The Role of AI  

In many of these data breaches, AI was used by hackers to accelerate and deepen the damage. Their tactics included: 

  • Hyper-Personalised Phishing: AI-generated messages mimicked trusted communications, referencing recent purchases to trick recipients. Louis Vuitton customers received convincing fake discount offers. 
  • Credential Cracking and MFA Bypass: AI automated brute-force login attacks, while adversary-in-the-middle techniques stole session tokens to sidestep multi-factor authentication. 
  • Network Reconnaissance: Malicious bots used AI to scan retail systems, identify vulnerabilities, and map out supply chains for deeper impact. 
  • Autonomous Ransomware: Sophisticated strains like DragonForce adapted in real time to avoid detection and self-propagate through connected systems. 
  • Voice Phishing (Vishing): AI-generated voices impersonated IT staff to deceive employees into disclosing access credentials; a tactic especially potent in luxury retail. 

AI has supercharged cybercrime, making attacks faster, more targeted, and far harder to detect. With the emergence of (RaaS) ransomware as a service and (DLS) there is now a marketplace for our data that is much more accessible. 

How Consumers Can Protect Their Data 

While companies bear the financial burden of breaches, consumers often suffer the most; through stolen data, financial fraud, and disrupted services. Lessons for consumers include: 

  • Even luxury brands are vulnerable – don’t assume prestige equals protection. 
  • Cyberattacks are increasingly tailored based on what you buy, how often you shop, and where you live. 
  • Supply chains and vendor access are weak points; your data might be exposed even if the retailer itself isn’t directly breached. 

Whether you shop in-store or online, these simple steps can dramatically improve the security of your personal data: 

Digital Defence 

  • Use Strong, Unique Passwords: A password manager can help you avoid reuse and weak combinations. 
  • Enable Multi-Factor Authentication: Critical for accounts tied to payments or personal information. 
  • Monitor Your Financial Activity: Check bank statements and credit reports for irregularities. Set up alerts where possible. 
  • Be Phishing-Aware: Always verify communications by visiting the retailer’s official website. Don’t click suspicious links or download unexpected attachments. 
  • Don’t Save Your Payment Data: If you can avoid saving your payment/address details with a retailer online then always avoid.  

Data Discipline 

  • Limit the Personal Data You Share: Don’t offer extra details to loyalty schemes or retailers unless absolutely necessary. 
  • Freeze Your Credit (If Breached): Prevent identity thieves from opening new accounts using your stolen details. 

Payment Hygiene 

  • Use Credit Cards Online: They offer better fraud protection and don’t expose your actual bank balance. In addition, you have certain buyer protections when buying on credit card. 
  • Avoid Public Wi-Fi for Shopping: Use a VPN or shop from secure, private networks. 

The digital age has made shopping easier; but also riskier. Cybersecurity now requires a partnership between retailers and consumers. Companies must implement
zero-trust architectures. AI-powered threat detection and employee cyber-awareness training. Meanwhile, consumers should stay informed, cautious, and quick to respond when their personal data is at risk. 

According to Stanford University’s recent study, human error accounted for 88% of data breaches and a recent Accenture study found that there has been a 97% increase in cyber threats since the start of the Russia/Ukraine war.  
 
We have two workshops coming up (How to Increase Cyber Security in your Organisation and Cyber Security for DPOs) which are ideal for organisations who wish to upskill their employees about cyber security. 

The MoD Afghan Data Breach: Could the Information Commissioner have done more? 

On Tuesday, the High Court lifted a superinjunction that prevented scrutiny of one of the most serious personal data breaches involving a UK Government department. In February 2022, a Ministry of Defence (MoD) official mistakenly emailed a spreadsheet containing personal details of over 18,000 Afghan nationals who had applied to move to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP).  

The breach was only discovered in August 2023, when excerpts of the data appeared on Facebook. By then, the damage was done. A new resettlement scheme for those on the leaked list was set up and has seen 4,500 Afghans arrive in the UK so far. The Afghan Relocation Route has cost £400m so far, and the Government has said it is expected to cost a further £450m. Interesting that that the High Court in May 2024 heard it could cost “several billions”. 

Shockingly, people whose details were leaked were only informed on Tuesday. A review of the incident carried out on behalf of the MoD found it was “highly unlikely” an individual would have been targeted solely because of the leaked data, which “may not have spread nearly as widely as initially feared”. On Wednesday though, the Defence Secretary said he was “unable to say for sure” whether anyone had been killed as a result of the data breach. The daughter of an Afghan translator whose details were leaked told the BBC that her whole family “panicked”.  

“No one knows where the data has been sent to – it could be sent to the Taliban, they could have their hands on it,” she said. Her grandmother, who is still in Afghanistan, is “completely vulnerable”, she added. 

This is not the first time the MoD has mishandled Afghan data. In December 2023, it was fined £350,000  for disclosing details of people seeking relocation to the UK shortly after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021. The MoD sent an email to a distribution list of Afghan nationals eligible for evacuation using the ‘To’ field, with personal information relating to 245 people being inadvertently disclosed. The email addresses could be seen by all recipients, with 55 people having thumbnail pictures on their email profiles.  
Two people ‘replied all’ to the entire list of recipients, with one of them providing their location.  

ICO’s Response 

Despite the scale and sensitivity of the latest MoD data breach, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has decided not to take any regulatory action; no, not even a reprimand! In its press release, the ICO praised the MoD’s internal investigation and mitigation efforts, stating that “no further regulatory action is required at this time”. 

Compare this case to the data breach involving the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). Last year, the ICO fined the PSNI £750,000 after staff mistakenly divulged the surnames of more than 9,483 PSNI officers and staff, their initials and other data in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request. The request, via the What Do They Know.Com website, had asked the PSNI for a breakdown of all staff rank and grades. But as well as publishing a table containing the number of people holding positions such as constable, a spreadsheet was included. The information was published on the WDTK website for more than two hours, leaving many fearing for their safety. 

In September las year it was announced that a mediation process involving the PSNI is to take place to attempt to agree the amount of damages to be paid to up to 7,000 staff impacted by the data breach. The final bill could be as much as £240m, according to previous reports. Compare that with the impact and cost of the latest MoD data breach. 

Other ICO enforcement actions in the past few years for security failures include: 

  • Cabinet Office (2020): Fined £500,000 for publishing New Year Honours list online. Cause? Spreadsheet error. 
  • HIV Scotland (2021): Fined £10,000 when it sent an email to 105 people living with HIV. All the email addresses were visible to all recipients, and 65 of the addresses identified people by name. From the personal data disclosed, an assumption could be made about individuals’ HIV status or risk.   
  • Mermaids (2021): Fined £25,000 for failing to implement an appropriate level of security to its internal email systems, which resulted in documents or emails containing personal data being searchable and viewable online by third parties through internet search engine results.  

In the MoD case, the ICO claims it considered the “critical need to share data urgently” and the MoD’s “steps to protect those most affected”. But urgency wasn’t the issue; it was negligence. The breach occurred during routine verification, not a crisis. Even more concerning, the ICO’s own guidance states that breaches involving unauthorised disclosure of sensitive data, especially where lives are at risk, should trigger enforcement action. 

This lack of action by the ICO raises serious questions about the ICO’s independence and willingness to challenge government departments. Even if it felt a fine was not appropriate, a report to Parliament (under Section 139(3) of Data Protection Act 2018) would have highlighted the seriousness of the issues raised and consequently allowed MP’s to scrutinise the MoD’s actions.  

This breach is a national scandal; not just for its scale, but for the lack of transparency, accountability, and regulatory action. If the UK is serious about data protection, it must demand more from its regulator. Otherwise, the next breach may be even worse and just as quietly buried. 

Yesterday, the Commons Defence Committee confirmed it would launch its own inquiry, and Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Commons Committee for Science Innovation and Technology, said that it is writing to the Information Commissioner pushing for an investigation. Watch this space! 

STOP PRESS: This afternoon the BBC reports that the data breach was much worse than previously thought: it contained personal details of more than 100 British officials including those whose identities are most closely guarded – special forces and spies. Is an ICO u turn incoming?

We have two workshops coming up (How to Increase Cyber Security in your Organisation and Cyber Security for DPOs) which are ideal for organisations who wish to upskill their employees about cyber security.

ICO Issues £60,000 GDPR Fine  

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined a Merseyside-based law firm £60,000 following a cyber-attack that led to highly sensitive personal data being published on the dark web. 

DPP Law Ltd (DPP) specialises in a number of areas of law including crime and actions against the police. It suffered the cyber-attack in June 2022 which affected access to the firm’s IT systems for over a week. The hackers were able to move laterally across DPP’s network and take over 32GB of data. DPP only became aware of this after the National Crime Agency contacted the firm to advise information relating to their clients had been posted on the dark web. DPP did not report the incident to the ICO until 43 days after they became aware of it. 

The ICO found that DPP failed to put appropriate measures in place to ensure the security of personal data held electronically. This failure enabled the hackers to gain access to DPP’s network, via an infrequently used administrator account which lacked multi-factor authentication (MFA) and steal large volumes of data. 

This is the second GDPR fine issued to a law firm. In March 2022, the ICO issued a fine of £98,000 to Tuckers Solicitors LLP. The fine followed a ransomware attack on the firm’s IT systems in August 2020. The attacker encrypted 972,191 files, of which 24,712 related to court bundles. 60 of those were exfiltrated by the attacker and released on the dark web. 

We have two workshops coming up (How to Increase Cyber Security in your Organisation and Cyber Security for DPOs) which are ideal for organisations who wish to upskill their employees about cyber security. See also our Managing Personal Data Breaches Workshop. 

Police Service of Northern Ireland Fined £750,000 for GDPR Breach 

The Information Commissioner’s Office has issued a GDPR fine of £750,000 to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) for a personal data breach affecting thousands of officers.  

In August 2023, in response to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request, the PSNI mistakenly divulged information on “every police officer and member of police staff”, a senior officer said at the time. The FoI request, via the What Do They Know.Com website, had asked the PSNI for a breakdown of all staff rank and grades. But as well as publishing a table containing the number of people holding positions such as constable, a spreadsheet was included. This contained the surnames of more than 9,483 PSNI officers and staff, their initials and other data, but did not include any private addresses. The information was published on the WDTK website for more than two hours, leaving many fearing for their safety. 

The ICO investigation found that simple-to-implement procedures could have prevented the breach. The ICO’s statement said: 

“Mindful of the current financial position at PSNI and not wishing to divert public money from where it is needed, the Commissioner used his discretion to apply the public sector approach in this case. Had this not been applied, the fine would have been £5.6 million.” 

On 26th June 2024, the ICO announced that it will review the two-year trial before making a decision on the public sector approach in the autumn. The Notice of Intent issued to the PSNI before this fine was issued, was also in the sum of £750,000.  

In August this year, the ICO issued a Notice of Intent £6.09 million to an NHS IT supplier, Advanced Computer Software Group Ltd (Advanced), following a significant data breach in 2022. This came after the ICO found that the company failed to adequately protect the personal data of 82,946 individuals. It will be interesting to see if, here too, the actual fine will be the same as the notice. 

Transport for London Cyber Attack 

Transport for London (TfL) is currently dealing with a cyber attack that has targeted its computer systems. Sources within TfL have revealed that staff have been encouraged to work from home where possible, as the attack primarily affects the transport provider’s back-office systems at its corporate headquarters. TfL is collaborating closely with the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Security Centre to respond to the incident. 

Shashi Verma, TfL’s Chief Technology Officer, said: 

“We have implemented several measures to address an ongoing cybersecurity incident within our internal systems. The security of our systems and customer data is of utmost importance, and we are continuously assessing the situation throughout this incident.”  

Mr Verma emphasised that, although a complete assessment is still underway, there is no current evidence of customer data being compromised. If it turns out that any personal data has been compromised, whether employee or customer data,  of course TfL will need to consider reporting the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) as a personal data breach under Article 33 of the UK GDPR. As a statutory body, failure to do so could lead to TfL being fined up to £8.7 million. If the ICO investigates and finds a breach of the DP Principles (e.g. security) this could rise to £17.5 million. 

Back in the day major cyber incidents involving personal data were sure to be the subject of an ICO fine. In 2018, British Airways and  Marriott International were fined £20 million and  £18.4 million respectively. More recently the ICO has issued more reprimands in line with its policy on public sector enforcement. It recently issued a reprimand to the Electoral Commission following the discovery that unspecified “hostile actors” had managed to gain access to copies of the electoral registers, from August 2021. On 26th June 2024, the ICO announced that it will now review the two-year trial before making a decision on the public sector approach in the autumn.  

This is not the first cyber attack on a major public service provider in the capital.  Last month the ICO announced that it had issued a GDPR Notice of Intent of £6.09 million to an NHS IT supplier. This comes after its findings that the company failed to adequately protect the personal data of 82,946 individuals in breach of Article 32 of the UK GDPR.  As a key IT and software provider for the NHS and other healthcare organisations across the country, Advanced often holds role of Data Processor for many of its clients. The breach in question occurred during a ransomware attack in August 2022. Hackers exploited a vulnerability through a customer account that lacked multi-factor authentication, gaining access to multiple health and care systems operated by Advanced. The compromised data included phone numbers, medical records, and even details on how to access the homes of 890 individuals receiving at-home care. 

We have two workshops coming up (How to Increase Cyber Security in your Organisation and Cyber Security for DPOs) which are ideal for organisations who wish to up skill their employees about cyber security. See also our Managing Personal Data Breaches Workshop. 

£6m Potential Fine for NHS IT Supplier

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced today that it has issued a GDPR Notice of Intent to an NHS IT supplier, Advanced Computer Software Group Ltd (Advanced), following a significant data breach in 2022.

The ICO’s preliminary decision is to impose a £6.09 million fine on Advanced.
This comes after its findings that the company failed to adequately protect the personal data of 82,946 individuals in breach of Article 32 of the UK GDPR.
As a key IT and software provider for the NHS and other healthcare organisations across the country, Advanced often holds role of Data Processor for many of its clients.

The breach in question occurred during a ransomware attack in August 2022.
Hackers exploited a vulnerability through a customer account that lacked multi-factor authentication, gaining access to multiple health and care systems operated by Advanced. The compromised data included phone numbers, medical records, and even details on how to access the homes of 890 individuals receiving at-home care.

The cyber-attack caused widespread disruption, with NHS 111 services impacted and some GPs resorting to pen and paper as electronic systems went offline. At the time, doctors warned that it could take months to clear the backlog of paperwork created by the incident.

This Notice of Intent serves as a reminder that Data Processors, like Advanced, have a duty to implement robust technical and organisational measures to safeguard personal data. This includes regularly assessing risks, applying multi-factor authentication, and keeping systems updated with the latest security patches. Data Processors cannot shift the responsibility to Data Controllers; their GDPR security obligations are independent of those of the Data Controller.

It is important to note that a Notice of Intent is not a fine — yet. It is a legal precursor, outlining the ICO’s provisional stance. Advanced now has the opportunity to make representations that could influence the final decision. This process is not without precedent: in 2018, British Airways faced a Notice of Intent for a £183 million fine due to a cybersecurity breach, but the actual fine  issued in 2020 was reduced to £20 million. Similarly, Marriott International Inc.’s fine dropped from £99 million to £18.4 million after a Notice of Intent in 2020.

It will be interesting to see how the ICO’s final decision on Advanced compares with its approach in other cases, such as the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) incident. The PSNI was issued a Notice of Intent for £750,000 earlier this year after mistakenly releasing sensitive information about every police officer and staff member in response to a Freedom of Information request.

The Act Now Advanced Certificate in GDPR Practice is designed for experienced Data Protection Officers seeking to develop their skills and confidence to tackle the most challenging data protection projects within their organisation.

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Electoral Commission Reprimanded for Data Breach Affecting 40 Million People

Last week the Information Commissioner’s Office(ICO) issue a GDPR reprimand to the Electoral Commission.

In August 2023 the Electoral Commission revealed, in a public notice issued under Article 33 and 34 of the UK GDPR, that it had been the victim of a “complex cyber-attack” potentially affecting millions of voters. It had discovered in October 2022 that unspecified “hostile actors” had managed to gain access to copies of the electoral registers, from August 2021. Hackers also broke into its emails and “control systems”.

The Commission said the information it held at the time of the attack included the names and addresses of people in the UK who registered to vote between 2014 and 2022. This included those who opted to keep their details off the open register, which is not accessible to the public but can be purchased. The data accessed also included the names, but not the addresses, of overseas voters.  The Commission further explained that it was difficult to predict exactly how many people could be affected, but it estimated the register for each year contains the details of around 40 million people. 

The ICO reprimand reveals that the Commission did not take basic security steps to ensure the protection of personal data. The ICO said:

“If the Electoral Commission had taken basic steps to protect its systems, such as effective security patching and password management, it is highly likely that this data breach would not have happened.”

Many have criticised the ICO for issuing a “slap on the wrist” rather than a fine for an entirely preventable cyberattack that exposed the personal data of 40 million UK voters. But the reprimand is in line with the ICO’s approach to public sector enforcement which has been the subject of a two year trial since June 2022. 
Explaining the approach at the time, the Information Commissioner wrote:

“I am not convinced large fines on their own are as effective a deterrent within the public sector. They do not impact shareholders or individual directors in the same way as they do in the private sector but come directly from the budget for the provision of services. The impact of a public sector fine is also often visited upon the victims of the breach, in the form of reduced budgets for vital services, not the perpetrators. In effect, people affected by a breach get punished twice.”

In June the ICO announced that it will now review the two-year trial before making a decision on the public sector approach in the Autumn.

The Act Now Advanced Certificate in GDPR Practice is designed for experienced Data Protection Officers seeking to develop their skills and confidence to tackle the most challenging data protection projects within their organisation.

Please subscribe to this blog and help us to get to 10,000 subscribers. 

Is the CrowdStrike Outage a Personal Data Breach under GDPR?

Friday’s global IT outage, caused by the CrowdStrike software update, is likely to continue to have an impact on critical systems this week. NHS England says that health service IT systems are back online but has warned that there may still be disruption, particularly with GP services who may need time to rebook appointments.

The question now for Data Protection Officers, in the UK and EU, is whether the CrowdStrike outage is a personal data breach under the UK and EU GDPR (hereinafter referred to as GDPR, since the law is effectively the same).  If it is, it may need to be reported to the data protection regulator (in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office(ICO)) and even to the individuals whose services have been affected e.g. patients, customers and service users.

Before making this decision, DPOs need to go back to first principles. The law on reporting data breaches is set out in Article 33 and 34 of the GDPR. Article 33 states:

“In the case of a personal data breach, the controller shall without undue delay and, where feasible, not later than 72 hours after having become aware of it, notify the personal data breach to the Commissioner , unless the personal data breach is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons. Where the notification under this paragraph is not made within 72 hours, it shall be accompanied by reasons for the delay.”

The term “personal data breach” has a very specific meaning which is set out by Article 4:

“a breach of security leading to the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed.”

So to even start to consider whether an incident needs to be reported, a DPO needs to consider whether it is “a breach of security” and, if it is, whether this breach has led to the consequences set out in Article 4 above i.e. accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data.

In deciding this question, many have jumped straight to focussing on the consequences of the incident; because it led to many organisations unable to access critical data which had a considerable impact on individuals; for example, GPs being unable to access patient medical records. They say it is a personal data breach due to lack of availability of data. They rely on the ICO guidance which states:

“A personal data breach can be broadly defined as a security incident that has affected the confidentiality, integrity or availability of personal data. In short, there will be a personal data breach whenever any personal data is accidentally lost, destroyed, corrupted or disclosed; if someone accesses the data or passes it on without proper authorisation; or if the data is made unavailable and this unavailability has a significant negative effect on individuals.”

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) guidance also classes lack of availability of personal data as a key factor. In footnote 18 on page 8, it states that:

“It is well established that “access” is fundamentally part of “availability”. See, for example, NIST SP80053rev4, which defines “availability” as: “Ensuring timely and reliable access to and use of information,” … CNSSI-4009 also refers to: “Timely, reliable access to data and information services for authorized users”. …   ISO/IEC 27000:2016 also defines “availability” as “Property of being accessible and usable upon demand by an authorized entity”

For an alternative view on the meaning of “loss” in Article 4, it is worth reading Jon Baines personal blog.

Few have considered the first aspect of the definition of a personal data breach, set out in Article 4 i.e. Is the CrowdStrike incident a “breach of security”? The cause of the incident has been identified as an update CrowdStrike made to its cloud-based software product called Falcon. When CrowdStrike pushed the update, which interacts with other parts of computer systems and software like Microsoft’s Windows products, it caused a malfunction that disabled those systems and their widely used pieces of software the world over. In short the outage was caused by a planned software update which went wrong; ironically the software intended to protect against crashes and disruptions in vital computer systems ended up crashing them!

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Geroge Kurtz, president and CEO of CrowdStrike said:

“ This is not a security incident or cyberattack.The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”

Some would say, “he would say that wouldn’t he!” Our point is, when deciding whether to report an incident as a personal data breach, rather than first focussing on the consequences, DPOs should first consider whether it is a “breach of security” or, perhaps in this case, planned maintenance (albeit which went disastrously wrong). EDPB guidance says:

“To be clear, where personal data is available due to planned maintenance being carried out this is not a “breach of security” as defined in Article 4(12).”

Of course even if the CrowdStrike incident is not a reportable data breach, this does not mean that there will be no repercussions for organisations who suffered an outage. The GDPR includes stand-alone obligations on Data Controllers to ensure they have technical and organisational measures to keep personal data safe and secure.

We have two workshops coming up (How to Increase Cyber Security in your Organisation and Cyber Security for DPOs) which are ideal for organisations who wish to up skill their employees about cyber security. See also our Managing Personal Data Breaches Workshop

ICO Reprimand for Children’s Services 

Yesterday, the ICO issued a reprimand to Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company after the personal information of a child was inappropriately disclosed to another family. 

The child protection and review department at Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company, which is owned by Birmingham City Council, was working with two neighbouring families when the data breach occurred. A child protection plan was disclosed to one family that contained both personal information and criminal allegations relating to a child from the neighbouring family. This information was included in error after being copied across from meeting minutes. 

The ICO investigation found that Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company did not have appropriate policies or sufficient practical guidance in place to ensure the security of personal information. This is a breach of Article 5(1)(f) and 32(1)(b) and 2 of the UK GDPR. 

The ICO has recommended that Birmingham Children’s Trust Community Interest Company should take further steps to ensure its compliance with data protection law, including: 

  • Implement a more granular approach to data protection and create a Standard Operating Procedure with regards to producing social care documents. 
  • Include a process for any social care product to be independently checked by someone other than the author prior to disclosure. 
  • Create and implement a corporate redaction policy, which ensures staff have the knowledge and tools, to redact the product if necessary. 

Our GDPR Essentials e learning course is ideal for organisations who wish to upskill their employees about data protection and data security.