The infosec saying that it's not a matter of if you'll be hacked, but when, might just be true if the British experience is anything to go by. What's more, if you suffer a data breach, support can be hard to come by.
The United Kingdom's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner, reported new figures from a survey that show 30 million people have had data lost or stolen. There are 69.3 million people in UK, and the ICO said 55 per cent of adults there reported having experienced a data breach.
New Zealand's former privacy commissioner, John Edwards, who now runs the UK ICO noted that the data breaches can have a devastating effect on people's lives, with 30 per cent of respondents saying the experienced emotional distress as a result.
Despite that, a quarter of survey respondents received no support from the organisations responsible for holding data securely, and almost a third of breach victims only found what had happened through media.
People said they've had to move homes, feeling forced out of jobs and facing discrimination due to the data breaches they had experienced.
Edwards called on organisations to do more to help data breach victims.
“There are two important things I need organisations to understand: empathy and action. You have a role to stop the negative ripple effect in someone’s life from spreading further. It is vitally important to acknowledge what has happened, be human in your response and commit to making sure it doesn’t happen again," Edwards said.
Given how much sensitive and potentially abusable information so many organisations collect on people, data that's often not secured, it's worth thinking about what Edwards says, carefully.
That emailed "we take our customers privacy and security seriously" data breach notification doesn't usually go far enough. That is, if a notification goes out at all, and people don't have to find out from other sources (such as the excellent HaveIBeenPwned site) instead.
2 Comments
Sadly I'm not particularly surprised by the figures from the UK. Many times over the years I've dealt with online stores based inthe UK that have been down due to hacking or infections - or they haven't been able to send emails due to viruses on their PCs.
It's like the sellers were stuck in the 1990s when the scariest virus was that one with the teddy bear wanting a cookie.
Thought you might be interested, Juha.
https://www.ft.com/content/61a7e376-5ad4-4d58-bbbb-1b443ab69591
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