News

Data protection regulations and compliance

• January 18, 2021 18 Jan'21

  MoD reports 18% rise in data loss incidents

  The Ministry of Defence reported more than five hundred data security incidents in 2019-20, with seven serious enough to warrant disclosure to the ICO

• January 15, 2021 15 Jan'21

  150,000 records accidentally wiped from police systems

  Home Office claims data wiped from national police systems only relates to people who have never been convicted of a crime or had further police action taken against them following an arrest

• January 15, 2021 15 Jan'21

  Coalition proposes secure standard model for Covid-19 passports

  Vaccination Credential Initiative is working to ensure that people vaccinated against Covid-19 can access their records in a secure, verifiable and privacy-preserving way

• January 08, 2021 08 Jan'21

  Major facial-recognition supplier builds system to identify masked faces

  Facial-recognition supplier claims new system can accurately identify masked faces, therefore promoting public health during the pandemic. But questions remain about whether its existing UK law enforcement clients will be deploying the technology

• January 08, 2021 08 Jan'21

  Brexit deal grants UK temporary data adequacy

  The EU-UK Brexit deal has granted the UK temporary data adequacy to allow for the continued flow of data across borders, but the agreement has divided data protection experts

• January 07, 2021 07 Jan'21

  Hackney Council data leaked by Pysa ransomware gang

  Council data stolen in October is leaked online in a double extortion attack

• December 18, 2020 18 Dec'20

  Utility supplier People’s Energy has entire customer list stolen

  All 270,000 customers of People’s Energy, a renewable energy startup, have had their details compromised in a major data breach incident

• December 07, 2020 07 Dec'20

  HMRC referred 11 data security incidents to ICO in 2019-20

  HM Revenue & Customs shares details of a number of data security incidents that occurred during the 2019-20 financial year in its annual report

• November 17, 2020 17 Nov'20

  Kaspersky shuts down data-processing activities in Russia

  Cyber security provider’s data storage and processing activities for customers in Europe, the US and Canada, have now been fully relocated to Switzerland

• November 10, 2020 10 Nov'20

  Leaky AWS S3 bucket once again at centre of data breach

  Prestige Software exposed millions of records after failing to pay attention to the security of its cloud instances

• November 10, 2020 10 Nov'20

  IT Priorities 2020: Covid-19 consolidates storage push to cloud

  The emphasis on home and remote working has been felt in storage and backup as in all areas of IT, with continued evolution towards the cloud and as-a-service storage and backup

• November 10, 2020 10 Nov'20

  IT Priorities 2020: After Covid-19, security goes back to basics

  This year’s transition to remote working highlighted big gaps in the fundamentals of security, as updated TechTarget/Computer Weekly data reveals

• November 06, 2020 06 Nov'20

  ICO sued over ‘failure’ to address ad industry practices

  Privacy campaigner the Open Rights Group claims the advertising technology industry is systematically breaching the GDPR, and the ICO is doing nothing about it

• November 05, 2020 05 Nov'20

  Slot of the Antarctic: Tape the best option for polar survey backup

  Tape deemed the best medium for backup on board the Antarctic research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough, with Quantum’s Scalar i3 chosen in a fully redundant deployment

• November 03, 2020 03 Nov'20

  GDPR lawsuit against Oracle and Salesforce moves forward

  Class action suit seeks claims worth more than £10bn over the processing of personal information

• November 01, 2020 01 Nov'20

  How Snowflake is charting its growth in APAC

  The cloud data warehouse supplier set foot in Asia-Pacific just three years ago and has started to gain traction among large enterprises in Singapore, India and Southeast Asia

• October 27, 2020 27 Oct'20

  Commvault launches Metallic backup service in Europe

  Backup giant adds backup as a service, with cloud-to-cloud backup and e-discovery functionality that can work across on-site datacentres and the AWS and Azure clouds

• October 27, 2020 27 Oct'20

  ICO slams Experian over ‘invisible’ data processing

  Data processing practices used by Experian broke data protection law, says Information Commissioner’s Office

• October 20, 2020 20 Oct'20

  BA breach penalty sets new GDPR precedents

  The 90% reduction in the fine levied on BA over a 2018 data breach has legal experts talking about the ramifications for the future of data protection

• October 16, 2020 16 Oct'20

  BA argues ICO data breach fine down to £20m

  Information Commissioner’s Office levies fine of £20m on British Airways for failing to protect the personal data of hundreds of thousands of passengers – a vast reduction on the initial £183m penalty

• October 15, 2020 15 Oct'20

  Cloud data protection keeps the Crick’s medical research Covid-secure

  Cloud data management services from Rubrik gave the Francis Crick Institute a data protection edge and have helped keep its vital work going through the pandemic

• October 14, 2020 14 Oct'20

  Fintech ‘unicorn’ Klarna probed over data misuse

  Online bank blames misuse of user data on human error as Information Commissioner’s Office weighs in

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  Department for Education failed to protect data on millions of children, says ICO

  The Department for Education’s National Pupil Database, which contains millions of items of data on the UK’s schoolchildren, was found to be non-compliant with data protection regulations across the board

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  ICO wraps up Cambridge Analytica investigation

  Information Commissioner’s Office concludes its investigation into Cambridge Analytica, saying no additional evidence has come to light that would change its previous assessments

• September 24, 2020 24 Sep'20

  Government blasted over ‘reckless’ contact-tracing security

  The Open Rights Group and Big Brother Watch accuse the government of endangering public health with a reckless attitude to contact-tracing data security

• September 22, 2020 22 Sep'20

  GDS reviewing Cloud First policy post-Schrems II

  Review seeks to determine the future of government engagement with cloud hosting services as they relate to cross-border data flows

• September 21, 2020 21 Sep'20

  India’s storage market takes hit but hasn’t lost its shine

  The slower growth in storage spending in India amid the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to be mitigated by digitisation efforts by financial services and manufacturing firms

• September 18, 2020 18 Sep'20

  Open Data Institute explores diverse range of data governance structures

  Unlocking the economic and social potential of data will require a diverse range of governance structures to meet the needs of different contexts, use cases and stakeholders

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Julian Assange held back 15,000 documents to prevent harm to US government

  Investigative journalist John Goetz said today that WikiLeaks held back publication of thousands of documents that could harm individuals

• September 15, 2020 15 Sep'20

  TikTok-Oracle partnership moves forward for consideration

  Joint venture proposal could create thousands of jobs and secure TikTok’s future outside China

• September 15, 2020 15 Sep'20

  Data of every Welsh Covid-19 patient leaked online

  Data on all 18,105 people in Wales who have received positive tests for the coronavirus was uploaded to a public-facing web server in error

• September 11, 2020 11 Sep'20

  Travel industry websites are laughably insecure, claims Which?

  The travel industry is failing to take the data security of its customers seriously, according to a Which? investigation

• September 07, 2020 07 Sep'20

  Court rejects request to exclude ‘11th hour’ US evidence against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

  Lawyers for Julian Assange say the US has introduced an 11th hour indictment against the WikiLeaks founder that provides additional grounds for his extradition

• September 07, 2020 07 Sep'20

  Government DPOs challenged by volume of GDPR work

  Data protection officers working across the UK government are finding it tough to keep up with the increased workload generated by GDPR, according to a report

• September 07, 2020 07 Sep'20

  Dutch bank set to save €5m via Veeam backup upgrade

  Rabobank ditched legacy backup where patching took months and restores took hours. Those times are now cut down massively and the bank has a readily available test environment

• August 25, 2020 25 Aug'20

  TikTok takes Trump to court

  Under-fire video app TikTok files a formal complaint in the federal courts challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to ban it in the US

• August 21, 2020 21 Aug'20

  TikTok’s GDPR compliance probed amid accusations of data misuse

  Dutch privacy organisation SOMI claims TikTok falls short in protecting young users, and that it is likely violating GDPR

• August 21, 2020 21 Aug'20

  MPs accuse ICO of failing to do its job on contact-tracing data

  Cross-party group of MPs say the ICO has failed to enforce data protection standards or hold the government to account over the unlawful Test and Trace programme

• August 20, 2020 20 Aug'20

  UKAS rejects ISO certification concerns

  UK’s certification body says refreshed guidance is in place to cover the possibility of lapsed ISO certifications

• August 20, 2020 20 Aug'20

  Social media data leak highlights murky world of data scraping

  A data brokerage left its database of 235 million Instagram, TikTok and YouTube profiles exposed to anybody who cared to access it

• August 19, 2020 19 Aug'20

  Veeam to add CDP, plus Google cloud as a target

  Backup giant set to add continuous data protection for the most critical workloads, plus Google cloud as a target – all on the back of a storming quarter during the pandemic

• August 19, 2020 19 Aug'20

  Coronavirus: Thousands of ISO certifications set to lapse

  Delays and postponements in the auditing process are putting hard-earned security and data protection certifications at risk of lapsing

• August 19, 2020 19 Aug'20

  Marriott slapped with class action lawsuit over 2018 breach

  Group action brings together millions of victims who stayed at the Starwood hotel chain over a four-year period

• August 18, 2020 18 Aug'20

  Reports Oracle to enter TikTok bidding war

  Oracle may be about to make a bid to acquire the US operations of TikTok from its Chinese parent ByteDance, according to the FT

• August 12, 2020 12 Aug'20

  Pure and Cohesity launch FlashRecover for flash-speed restores

  Flash market pioneer links up with scale-out backup product maker to provide bundled backup plus super-fast recovery based around Pure FlashBlade storage arrays

• August 11, 2020 11 Aug'20

  French data protection authorities to probe TikTok as suitors circle

  France’s CNIL has confirmed a new investigation into TikTok’s data protection practices

• August 11, 2020 11 Aug'20

  Hospitality sector is failing on contact-tracing obligations

  Cyber security experts urge the government to do more to help small hospitality businesses improve their contact-tracing data-handling practices

• August 06, 2020 06 Aug'20

  Footballers to take legal action over use of performance and tracking data

  Planned lawsuit will argue that the use of players’ statistics by third-party companies is incompatible with footballers’ data rights

• July 29, 2020 29 Jul'20

  Majority of organisations at risk of cloud data exposure

  Report casts doubt on the effectiveness of the shared responsibility model of cloud security

• July 24, 2020 24 Jul'20

  A question of trust: University and supplier on the hook for data breach

  Data on students at the University of York was stolen in a ransomware attack on a supplier two months ago, and the response of both parties raises serious questions

• July 23, 2020 23 Jul'20

  Commvault refreshes HyperScale backup appliances with Hedvig

  Backup player set to replace Fujitsu/Red Hat-based backup appliances with new hardware and storage software from Hedvig, which it bought late last year

• July 23, 2020 23 Jul'20

  Post-Privacy Shield, what chance for a Brexit data adequacy deal?

  The striking down of Privacy Shield has been hailed as a victory for digital rights and privacy campaign groups, but it will have consequences that go beyond transatlantic data transfers

• July 20, 2020 20 Jul'20

  ICO hails transformative year as average fine trebles

  Information Commissioner’s Office annual report reflects on a busy period, during which it levied two of the largest fines so far seen under the GDPR

• July 20, 2020 20 Jul'20

  Test and Trace programme unlawful, admits government

  The Department of Health and Social Care failed in its legal obligation to complete a mandatory Data Protection Impact Assessment

• July 09, 2020 09 Jul'20

  Clearview AI faces ICO investigation over facial recognition

  Controversial company that scraped data from the public internet to build its facial recognition algorithm faces a joint UK-Australian investigation into its practices

• July 07, 2020 07 Jul'20

  Australian government foreshadows ‘sovereign data’ classification

  The Australian government will examine if certain government datasets should be declared sovereign and only be hosted in the country

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Out of date security laws leave UK plc at risk during pandemic

  The CyberUp coalition has written to Boris Johnson to urge him to reform the UK’s 30 year-old cyber crime laws

• June 25, 2020 25 Jun'20

  Veeam bullish on growth in APAC

  Veeam’s top executive in Asia-Pacific expects the company’s growth momentum in the region to continue despite the Covid-19 pandemic, and is setting sights on growth areas such as container backups

• June 24, 2020 24 Jun'20

  EU judges GDPR an overall success, but changes still needed

  Two years after its implementation, an EU report says that the GDPR is achieving what it set out to do, with a few reservations

• June 24, 2020 24 Jun'20

  Brits will sell their personal data for pennies

  Surprising findings from an Okta report on digital identity suggest Brits would be willing to part with valuable personal data for a surprisingly low amount

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  Twitter contacts business users over data exposure

  Issue relates to how web browsers cached confidential data entered in Twitter’s ads and analytics services, but is unlikely to have resulted in compromise

• June 16, 2020 16 Jun'20

  UK-US data deal puts Brexit data adequacy pact at risk

  European Data Protection Board writes to MEPs saying the UK is at risk of failing to strike a post-Brexit data adequacy accord if its data protection agreements with the US don’t strike the right note

• June 02, 2020 02 Jun'20

  Digital transformation held back by lack of skilled people

  Veeam survey finds digital transformation a hot topic, but 44% of firms are held back by skills shortages. Meanwhile, the cost of downtime is found to be $67,651 per hour for the most important apps

• June 02, 2020 02 Jun'20

  NIS security regulations proving effective, but more work to do

  The UK’s NIS cyber security and risk regulations are proving somewhat effective, according to a government report

• May 29, 2020 29 May'20

  Singapore’s contact-tracing app tops privacy study

  Singapore’s TraceTogether is least intrusive in terms of privacy communications compared with similar apps in the region, study finds

• May 19, 2020 19 May'20

  GDPR wholly inappropriate to govern contact-tracing data

  Human Rights Committee Chair Harriet Harman says current data protection law is not up to the job of governing the data collected by the Covid-19 contact-tracing app

• May 19, 2020 19 May'20

  Nine million EasyJet customer details lost in data breach

  Cyber attack on EasyJet’s systems originated from a highly sophisticated source, says the airline

• May 13, 2020 13 May'20

  Can Lady Gaga and Madonna get people to take security seriously?

  What does it take to get people to pay attention to cyber security? A celebrity law firm hack may hold some answers

• May 12, 2020 12 May'20

  APAC firms still coming to grips with data protection

  More governments in Asia are implementing data protection regimes, but challenges such as checkbox compliance and the lack of effective staff training remain

• May 12, 2020 12 May'20

  How Australian firms can plug data protection gaps

  Australian organisations can address data protection challenges by creating roles such as a data governance lead, classifying data and improving employee awareness of cyber hygiene

• May 04, 2020 04 May'20

  NHSX contact-tracing app needs legislative oversight

  Legal experts have told Parliament’s Human Rights Committee that legislation is desirable to ensure public trust in the data security of the Covid-19 coronavirus contact-tracing app

• May 04, 2020 04 May'20

  IT Priorities 2020: Compliance and risk are top security concerns

  When it comes to security, buyers are prioritising solutions and services that address compliance issues, risk management and data protection, according to the Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT Priorities 2020 study

• April 27, 2020 27 Apr'20

  Australia’s CovidSafe app debuts, source codes to follow

  Australia’s contact tracing app has been downloaded more than 1.1 million times, even as privacy concerns linger on

• April 24, 2020 24 Apr'20

  Dark data is contributing to carbon emissions

  Almost six million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be pumped into the atmosphere this year as a result of dark data, Veritas research finds

• April 21, 2020 21 Apr'20

  When data protection is not enough

  Organisations should take a holistic approach to data protection and cyber security in what the CEO of Acronis deems a “cyber protection” strategy

• April 16, 2020 16 Apr'20

  Check Point sounds alarm over double extortion ransomware threat

  Researchers say double extortion ransomware attacks are likely to increase in frequency, and warn organisations to be on guard

• April 15, 2020 15 Apr'20

  Coronavirus: ICO temporarily relaxes regulatory approach

  The Information Commissioner’s Office sets out a revised approach to its regulatory duties during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic

• April 15, 2020 15 Apr'20

  Government urged to delay digital services tax amid coronavirus outbreak

  Delaying liabilities for a year could help technology companies already stretched thin by the outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, according to TechUK

• April 01, 2020 01 Apr'20

  What we can learn from Marriott’s new data breach embarrassment

  Marriott International has egg on its face once again following a second data breach in as many years, but there are encouraging signs in its response that suggest it is at least trying to learn from its experiences

• March 26, 2020 26 Mar'20

  Coronavirus: What are the latest free cyber security offers?

  We round up the latest free offers on cyber security products and services being made available during the Covid-19 coronavirus crisis

• March 25, 2020 25 Mar'20

  Almost half of UK businesses suffered a cyber attack in past year

  Latest government statistics reveal the scale of the cyber security challenge facing UK plc, but reveals some cause for optimism

• March 25, 2020 25 Mar'20

  Australia inks digital economy pact with Singapore

  Australia’s digital economy agreement with Singapore will pave the way for data transfers and other digital trade opportunities

• March 20, 2020 20 Mar'20

  UK Coronavirus Bill relaxes restrictions on mass surveillance powers

  Emergency legislation would massively expand state surveillance and police detainment powers

• March 17, 2020 17 Mar'20

  UK makes its case for post-Brexit data adequacy decision

  Government sets out an explanatory framework as it seeks adequacy decisions from the European Commission to maintain the free flow of personal data between the European Union, the UK and Gibraltar

• March 10, 2020 10 Mar'20

  VAT software supplier exposed data of millions

  Eight million sales records belonging to UK and EU consumers left exposed due to misconfigured server

• March 05, 2020 05 Mar'20

  Biometrics ethics group takes evidence on public-private use of facial recognition

  Collaboration between police forces and private entities on facial recognition technology comes under scrutiny by the Home Office’s Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group

• February 27, 2020 27 Feb'20

  Clearview hack fuels debate over facial recognition

  Customers of Clearview AI, a controversial startup that scrapes and sells billions of photos of people from social media to police forces, have found themselves at the centre of a major data breach

• February 24, 2020 24 Feb'20

  Thai university to roll out data protection certification

  Thailand’s National Institute of Development Administration is offering a certification programme to get organisations ready for the country’s data protection regime

• February 21, 2020 21 Feb'20

  Labour condemns Google data plans

  Shadow digital minister Chi Onwurah challenges the government to stop Google’s plans to move UK user data out of the EU

• February 20, 2020 20 Feb'20

  Google plans to send Brits’ data to US after Brexit

  Move puts British user data beyond the reach of the EU’s GDPR, makes it more accessible to UK and US law enforcement agencies, and has prompted anger

• February 19, 2020 19 Feb'20

  Blasé directors put business data at risk

  The higher up within a business you go, the more likely you are to find people intentionally leaking confidential data, says Egress

• February 18, 2020 18 Feb'20

  Veeam Availability Suite v10 adds NAS backup and cloud tiering

  Availability Suite is mostly about consolidating the company’s data management platform idea, but it has added incremental forever NAS backup, cloud tiering and recovery to vSphere

• February 10, 2020 10 Feb'20

  Police use of facial recognition ‘unjustifiable’, says Scottish Justice Committee

  Members of the Scottish Parliament have said police use of live facial recognition technology is “not fit for purpose”

• February 05, 2020 05 Feb'20

  Veeam pushes subscription licensing in cloud-centric ‘Act II’

  Backup specialist wants to “win the cloud” as it pushes towards a cloud-focused vision that includes pay-for-what-you-use and multicloud after its acquisition last month

• February 04, 2020 04 Feb'20

  Acronis CEO bullish as specialist goes beyond backup

  Acronis is set to launch Cyber Protect as it rides a wave of confidence based on increasing revenues and investor funding. Will the backup-plus-cyber protection calculation pay off?

• January 28, 2020 28 Jan'20

  Data privacy benefits outweigh spend, says Cisco

  Cisco’s 2020 data privacy study shows organisations can generate substantial returns on their data privacy and protection spending

• January 24, 2020 24 Jan'20

  Disaster recovery failover choices: Synchronous mirrors, P2V and the cloud

  We survey the key options in disaster recovery: whether to failover to an on-site location or off-site facility. We also look at the cloud as an option in disaster recovery

• January 20, 2020 20 Jan'20

  Exposed AWS buckets again implicated in multiple data leaks

  A series of data leaks in the past week have once again implicated poorly secured Amazon S3 buckets, which are supposed to be private by default

• January 20, 2020 20 Jan'20

  GDPR nets more than €100m in fines, with more to come

  Fines totalling €114m have already been collected under GDPR, and this figure will spike in 2020 if the UK regulator succeeds in imposing record fines on BA and Marriott

• January 17, 2020 17 Jan'20

  Scottish police roll out controversial data extraction technology

  The introduction of new mobile phone data extraction terminals to Police Scotland will go ahead despite concerns that the use of the technology could be unlawful