NEWS & UPDATES

The government has warned of the increased fines organisations face for breaching Data Protection rules from May 2018, which could see fines as high as £17m.

Utility firms, transport firms, the healthcare sector and infrastructure companies are being warned to develop more robust safeguards to defend themselves from data breaches and cyberattacks, or face the costly consequences.

With mandatory reporting and massive fines being implemented in the next few months, the warnings cannot fall on deaf ears.
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There is growing importance for organisations to protect against hacking. In light of a number of infamous hacks that have occurred in recent years, it’s clear that we’re all at risk of third-party actors hacking into our servers and systems.

We have seen millions of documents and files being hacked from a number of organisations worldwide. Malicious actors can get in with simple vulnerabilities, like an organisation’s failure to update their Outlook webmail system. One simple error like this could lead to the whole organisation’s data servers being accessed!
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In recent years, the healthcare industry has been a big target for cyber-hackers, and there have been some huge cases reported. The healthcare industry leads the way in terms of the highest number of breaches and leaks in the U.K. and in other countries too, and in one example we’ll take a look at here, a hospital suffered a medical data breach that reportedly affected some 30,000 patients.

A medical breach involving 30,000 patients is absolutely monumental!
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Cyberattacks and data breaches have soared in recent years, and the U.S. has suffered huge amounts of breaches that has also affected U.K. organisations and citizens too.

They’re a worry because they can identify weaknesses in a country similar to us in terms of technological reliance and development. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at seven of the biggest government data breaches from across the pond in the U.S.
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Amazon recently launched their Amazon Web Service (AWS) – a completely separate arm to their huge retail business. The ever-expanding company has been hugely successful, primarily by embracing the modern method of online retail.

The AWS is marketed at all businesses and organisations: large, small, and even start-ups. Its services include database storage, analytics and management services, and they pride themselves on providing ‘flexibility, scalability and reliability’. The seemingly impressive service has already attracted many high profile companies and organisations including British Gas; Just Eat; Channel 4 and Trainline.
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Cybersecurity consultancy firm Accenture reportedly held an incredible amount of sensitive customer data on four cloud servers that were not password-protected. There were some 137GB of data on Amazon’s cloud bucket that included decryption keys, and without a password, the account was essentially available for access by the public.

The unsecured servers were discovered by a security research firm, UpGuard, in mid-September. They found:

• Secret Application Programming Interfaces
• Authentication credentials
• Certificates
• Decryption keys
• Customer information

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The U.S. National Football League has reportedly seen a huge data leak where 1,113 players had their personal information posted online.

The website for the NFL Players Association also included contact information for the players and their agents in the reach. Exposed information apparently included:

• Email addresses and mobile telephone numbers
• Home addresses of agents
• IP addresses for users when signing in
• Logged information for the website was accessed
• Advisor fee percentages

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Cab Guru Limited has been found liable for breaking data protection and electronic communication rules by sending out hundreds of thousands of unwanted text messages to market their services.

The company was set-up by a number of licensed taxis and private hire firms to make an app for customers to book cabs through their smartphones… the app allowed people to compare fares and how long taxis would take to pick them up.

Ti help market the new venture, the Cambridge-based company sent text messages that advertised their app to hundreds of thousands of people. While the stunt may have worked for some, hundreds took to complaining and reporting the unsolicited marketing messages.
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“Are you getting the best rates for home energy saving solutions and products?!”

How many calls do you get with over enthusiastic salespeople asking you if you want to switch your energy provider, bring a PPI claim or even talk about a car accident you didn’t even know you’d been involved in?

After the first few calls you start to realise just how annoying they are, and then the questions begin: “How did they get my number? Why are they calling me? Where are they coming from?”

There are all sorts of ways they can get hold of your details, and there’s a very big market for the sale of information for marketing purposes. It can often be a dark web of information being passed around time and time again, and when companies fail to check whether they can call people, the ICO will end up involved.
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Your Money Rights Limited was found guilty of breaching data protection principles by reportedly making a record 146 million nuisance calls pushing people to make PPI claims.

Based in Carmarthenshire, the company statistically made enough calls to contact every woman, man and child in the U.K. twice over.

Anyone reading this has probably experienced at least half a dozen in the past year. Recipients were less than amused by the numerous calls and complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office over the unsolicited calls, saying the recorded messages made them feel “harassed and threatened”.
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Newkirk Products Inc, a company who provides ID cards for health insurance plans, revealed a data breach took place last year that allowed unauthorised access to a server that contained member information.

The server that was hacked reportedly contained the data for an estimated 3.3 million members.

Now, this is the kind of breach that can be very dangerous several years after the event. With cybercriminals known to hold on to information for future use, any victim of a data breach needs to be wary.
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Google has been locking horns with the U.S federal government once again over the storage of data abroad.

It’s believed Google lost their third dispute in court over the matter, and lengthy legal battles remain at large.

The disputes arose when Google challenged the validity of a search warrant for looking through company data that was stored abroad. This asks the question about who has jurisdiction for information held overseas, and therefore which laws apply to the stored data.
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