ICO STUDY SHOWS A 75% INCREASE IN DATA BREACH REPORTS

18 September 2018

According to a study from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), data breaches have shown a 75% increase in the past two years.

The report was conducted by Kroll, one of the top corporate investigations and risk consulting firms, based out of the US. Kroll compiled data breach reports which were submitted to the ICO, regarding breaches of personal data, including financial and health details. Some of the data contained in the reports were of public knowledge, whilst other forms of data were accessed under the Freedom of Information Act.

The final report established that over 2,000 reports submitted to the ICO were due to human error in the past year, with the most common grounds for a data breach being: data being sent by email or fax to the wrong recipients and the loss or theft of paperwork.

In contrast to this, the report found that only 292 were due to deliberate cyber-attacks, with the most frequent being unauthorised access to personal data.

The report established that the most common sector affected by data breaches was the health industry with a total of 1214 data breaches in the past year.

Kroll’s Managing Director, Andrew Beckett discussed the reasons behind the increase, stating:

“The recent rise in the number of reports is due to organisations’ gearing up for the GDPR as much as an increase in incidents. Now that the regulation is in force, we would expect to see a significant surge in the number of incidents reported, as the GDPR imposes a duty on all organisations to report certain types of personal data breach”

He also commented on the increase in penalties that organisations should expect to face after experiencing a data breach, which could be 4% percent of annual turnover or up €20 million, whichever is the higher amount.  Mr Bennett discussed the concept of risk, stating

“The ultimate impact is that businesses face not only a much greater financial risk around personal data, but also a heightened reputational risk.”