News

Data protection regulations and compliance

• November 12, 2021 12 Nov'21

  Oversight of biometrics and surveillance should not go to ICO

  Biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner Fraser Sampson has panned the UK government’s proposed plan to absorb the functions of those roles under the remit of the information commissioner

• November 09, 2021 09 Nov'21

  Yoti develops age estimation algorithm for under-13s

  Age estimation technology developed by Yoti is being pitched as a way of helping social media platforms and other online businesses protect younger internet users from harm

• November 08, 2021 08 Nov'21

  Gig economy workforce nearly trebles over five years

  Over four million people in England and Wales now work for gig economy platforms at least once a week, marking a nearly threefold increase since 2016

• November 03, 2021 03 Nov'21

  Facebook self-imposes facial recognition moratorium

  Facebook and Meta have committed to halting their use of facial recognition technology and deleting the biometric data of more than a billion people by the end of 2021, but will retain the underlying algorithms and software for potential use in ...

• October 27, 2021 27 Oct'21

  Cohesity beefs up ransomware and disaster recovery offer

  Disaster Recovery as-a-service, Data Govern and project Fort Knox available or in development as data protection supplier augments its portfolio with ransomware firmly in mind

• October 22, 2021 22 Oct'21

  MEPs vote to expand Europol data mandate

  The European Parliament has voted in favour of expanding Europol’s mandate to process data and develop AI tools, but critics claim it contradicts a previous vote which opposed using new technologies to predict crime

• October 12, 2021 12 Oct'21

  Ban UK police use of facial-recognition, House of Lords told

  Experts giving evidence to the House of Lords have said that UK police use of facial-recognition technology is disproportionate and ineffective, and further questioned the utility of algorithmic crime ‘prediction’ tools

• October 11, 2021 11 Oct'21

  Malaysia’s highway authority improves DR capabilities

  The Malaysian Highway Authority is now more resilient against cyber attacks through a local disaster-recovery-as-a-service offering powered by Veeam software

• October 07, 2021 07 Oct'21

  ICO expresses concerns over its future independence

  In its response to the government’s data protection consultation, the Information Commissioner’s Office has raised worries over its future ability to function independently of government interference

• October 01, 2021 01 Oct'21

  Met Police purchase new retrospective facial-recognition system

  Retrospective facial-recognition software purchased for £3m by the Met Police will be deployed in coming months amid continuing controversy around the use of biometric technologies by law enforcement bodies

• September 28, 2021 28 Sep'21

  Digital regulators need discrete but cooperative remits

  The UK’s information commissioner has told MPs that digital economy regulators need discrete remits backed up by strong information sharing powers to both provide clear focus as well as allow for greater cooperation between their disparate but ...

• September 27, 2021 27 Sep'21

  GCP gets triple-redundant NAS and built-in Kubernetes backup

  Google Filestore Enterprise will provide synchronous replication across three zones, while Backup for Google Kubernetes Engine brings built-in container cluster data protection

• September 20, 2021 20 Sep'21

  NGO Fair Trials calls on EU to ban predictive policing systems

  The use of artificial intelligence to predict criminal behaviour should be banned because of its discriminatory outcomes and high risk of further entrenching existing inequalities, claims Fair Trials

• September 15, 2021 15 Sep'21

  UN human rights chief calls for moratorium on AI technologies

  High commissioner’s call for a moratorium on the use of AI systems that pose a serious risk to human rights is accompanied by a UN report on the negative human rights impacts associated with the technology

• August 27, 2021 27 Aug'21

  Are proposed data protection changes a threat to UK citizens’ privacy?

  Though changes are as-yet undefined pending an upcoming consultation, concerns are already being expressed over the government’s plan to liberalise data protection laws in the service of innovation and growth

• August 26, 2021 26 Aug'21

  Government unveils post-Brexit data flow proposals

  The government will pursue data partnerships with countries including Australia, South Korea and the US as part of a post-Brexit data regime that may also see substantial changes to the UK’s data protection law

• August 26, 2021 26 Aug'21

  NZ privacy lead John Edwards named new information commissioner

  DCMS has named John Edwards, currently New Zealand privacy commissioner, to succeed Elizabeth Denham as UK information commissioner

• August 24, 2021 24 Aug'21

  Over a million opt out of NHS data-sharing

  Failure to communicate benefits of data-sharing proposals and privacy concerns are prompting large numbers of people to opt out of a proposed NHS Digital scheme

• August 23, 2021 23 Aug'21

  Veeam survey: Big cloud impact on backup and disaster recovery

  Backup specialist finds cloud eclipses on-site compute for all workloads while DR makes big strides in the cloud despite concerns about complexity and security

• August 19, 2021 19 Aug'21

  Pub apps harvesting swathes of customer data unnecessarily

  Some pub and restaurant chain apps demand data such as gender and marital status, raising eyebrows among privacy campaigners

• July 28, 2021 28 Jul'21

  Almost half unaware of GP data-sharing plans

  Around half of adults in England – approximately 20 million people – remain unaware of the scope of the NHS GPDPR programme, prompting calls for a public education campaign

• July 13, 2021 13 Jul'21

  Secureworks sets up in EU datacentre for XDR services

  New datacentre location helps Secureworks’ customers meet EU data residency requirements

• June 23, 2021 23 Jun'21

  City of York picks Barracuda Networks for data protection

  York Council needed to refresh its backup service to bring new security protections after it went ‘all-in’ on Microsoft Office 365

• June 18, 2021 18 Jun'21

  UK taskforce calls for cutting GDPR protections

  The UK’s Taskforce on Innovation, Growth and Regulatory Reform has recommended scrapping safeguards against automated decision-making contained in the General Data Protection Regulation

• June 15, 2021 15 Jun'21

  The Security Interviews: How to build a government model to ‘hack for good’

  Kyle Hanslovan started Huntress to give back after a career in the intelligence sector. After US authorities took action to help people hit by the Microsoft Exchange attacks, we discussed how governments can ‘hack for good’

• June 09, 2021 09 Jun'21

  Cohesity brings DataProtect backup-as-a-service to Europe via AWS

  Scale-out backup appliance pioneer adds backup-as-a-service from a virtual machine on customer premises

• June 08, 2021 08 Jun'21

  NHS Digital delays data collection plans until September

  NHS Digital has postponed its proposed collection of GP data for two months, to allow more time for the public to understand the process and opt out if wanted

• June 08, 2021 08 Jun'21

  National data guardian calls for dialogue on NHS Digital GP plans

  The UK’s national data guardian says it is important the public has clarity on how their confidential medical information will be used and kept secure under NHS data-sharing plans

• June 07, 2021 07 Jun'21

  EU privacy chief investigates use of US cloud services

  Use of Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud services by public sector bodies in the European Union is being scrutinised by the bloc’s privacy watchdog

• June 07, 2021 07 Jun'21

  IBM pushes back against US government data requests

  Technology giant IBM says the US government has ‘no jurisdiction’ to request data from its European entities

• June 07, 2021 07 Jun'21

  Campaigners plan legal action over NHS data sharing

  Privacy coalition aims to force NHS Digital to push back its plans to scrape medical information on millions of patients into a central database

• June 04, 2021 04 Jun'21

  UK immigration exemption in Data Protection Act found unlawful

  Court of Appeal rules immigration exemption unlawful, but further hearings will follow to decide what remedies must be put in place

• June 04, 2021 04 Jun'21

  BCS: Lack of communication over NHS GPDPR ‘astonishing’

  The Chartered Institute for IT has warned that millions of people are not being properly informed of NHS Digital plans to harvest their data

• June 03, 2021 03 Jun'21

  Tories fined over email data protection breaches

  The Conservative Party broke the law by failing to properly keep records of who had unsubscribed from its mailing list

• June 01, 2021 01 Jun'21

  Exagrid pays $2.6m to Conti ransomware attackers

  Backup appliance specialist hit by Conti ransomware in May with cyber criminals downloading employee and customer data, confidential contracts and source code

• May 28, 2021 28 May'21

  Privacy experts concerned over NHS data collection plans

  Security and data privacy experts warn NHS Digital that its data collection plans could increase risk and cause a public backlash

• May 26, 2021 26 May'21

  More data stolen in January 2021 than in all of 2017, says report

  The volume of data being stolen through breaches is growing steadily and shows no sign of slowing, according to a report from Imperva

• May 25, 2021 25 May'21

  Oil and gas firm halves backup licence cost with Hycu move

  Summit E&P made a strategic move to Nutanix hyper-converged and away from NetApp and VMware and wanted backup that could handle virtual machines and physical servers

• May 25, 2021 25 May'21

  Threat of group GDPR legal action haunts CISOs

  The vast majority of security leaders questioned for a new report say they are concerned about the possibility of group legal settlements against them following a serious data breach

• May 25, 2021 25 May'21

  Industry reflects on three years of GDPR

  Looking back on 12 tumultuous months, we assess how GDPR has weathered the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit, and consider what the coming year may hold for data protection

• May 19, 2021 19 May'21

  Reports of stolen Irish health service data being leaked online

  Leaking of deeply confidential and personal information on patient healthcare marks a new low for the criminal Conti gang

• May 18, 2021 18 May'21

  Microsoft EU Data Boundary dubbed ‘smoke and mirrors’

  Data protection experts claim Microsoft’s decision to create an EU Data Boundary is a tacit admission that it routinely transfers and processes the personal data of European citizens outside the bloc

• May 06, 2021 06 May'21

  Scammers accidentally reveal fake Amazon review data

  More than 13 million records relating to an organised fake review scam have been found on an unsecured ElasticSearch database, implicating hundreds of thousands of people in unethical behaviour

• April 29, 2021 29 Apr'21

  G7 countries to cooperate on digital regulation

  Digital and technology ministers outline their agenda for how technology can be used to facilitate the post-Covid recovery, signalling closer collaboration in key areas of the digital economy

• April 28, 2021 28 Apr'21

  NHS App to serve as vaccine passport for foreign holidays

  Existing NHS App will have vaccine passport functionality added to it, transport secretary confirms

• April 27, 2021 27 Apr'21

  Leaky Azure storage account puts software developer IP at risk

  Source code for multiple products was left exposed in an unsecured Microsoft Azure cloud storage account, say researchers, but attributing responsibility for the error has proved difficult

• April 15, 2021 15 Apr'21

  Ireland’s DPC launches probe into Facebook leak

  The Irish Data Protection Commission has launched an ‘own volition’ inquiry into the leak of data from 500 million Facebook profiles

• April 06, 2021 06 Apr'21

  Facebook data leak could be outside scope of GDPR

  Regulators may be unable to do much about leaked data on 533 million Facebook users, as it seems to have been stolen before GDPR came into force

• March 29, 2021 29 Mar'21

  Backup survey: UK councils’ downtimes five times longer than average

  Backup product supplier Veeam’s freedom of information request finds councils’ average downtime is seven hours and that backup and disaster recovery testing is not done frequently

• March 24, 2021 24 Mar'21

  IWM uses StorCycle to free capacity for all-flash SAN upgrade

  Imperial War Museums set to embark on unstructured data archiving project that will archive cold data to tape and free up capacity for a move to IntelliFlash all-flash SAN