In the latest fine by The ICO, Kent Police have been fined £100,000 after it was discovered that highly confidential information was left in a basement of a former police cell. The data breach was stumbled upon by chance as a policeman was at the premises, which had since been sold to a commercial property owner, and saw boxes with Kent Police tape wrapped around them. Upon questioning the business owner as to how he had come into possession of this data, he said he had found the boxes and was planning to watch the contents for entertainment. The property was searched thoroughly and subsequently hundreds of additional taped interviews, documents and evidence tapes were discovered, including recorded interviews of informants, victims and perpetrators: A severe breach of data protection.
The ever-increasing frequency of data breaches from industries of all kinds is worrying and it has never been more important for companies to scrutinise their current data protection procedures in order to protect themselves, employees and customers. The repercussions of a data breach are far reaching and it can be difficult for a company to redeem themselves following such an embarrassing lack of duty of care regarding sensitive data ICO Head of Enforcement, Stephen Eckersley, said:
If this information had fallen into the wrong hands, the impact on people’s lives would have been enormous and damaging. These tapes and files included extremely sensitive and confidential information relating to individuals, many of whom had been involved in serious and violent crimes. How a police force could leave such information unattended in a basement for several years is difficult to understand.
This clear lack of oversight could easily have been avoided had effective and secure data protection procedures been put into place, and in this case the perpetrators, informants and victims have only luck to thank that this data didn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Redstor are experts in data protection and have been for 15 years. When storing data with Redstor, data is encrypted at your site, prior to transit, and only you have access to the encryption key. This means no one, not even us, can read your data. Our services enjoy an extremely high 95%+ customer retention rate from organisations across the public and private sector. To find out more on our services and how we can help you comply with data protection laws please contact us either by giving us a ring on 01189 515 200 or emailing us at [email protected]. Redstor is a market leader in providing security, storage and disaster recovery services to the public and private sector. Our range of secure and encrypted cloud services are already protecting the data of over 10,000 organisations across the UK. Redstor’s Online Backup service ensures data is safely backed up offsite in an encrypted format. Our cloud sync and share service, Centrastor, enables organisations to store and share files securely online from any device with an Internet connection and our CentraStage service enables support providers to guarantee that devices they support are regularly audited, patched and safely up-to-date for effective endpoint management. Our Virtual Disaster Recovery service guarantees to have your systems up and running within minutes following a disaster. To find out more about our services and how we can help you comply with data protection laws and prevent data leakage, please contact us either by giving us a ring on 01189 515 200 or emailing [email protected].
See related articles
