So, on becoming aware of a breach, you should contain it and assess the potential adverse consequences for individuals, based on how serious or substantial these are, and how likely they are to happen.įor more details about assessing risk, please see section IV of the Article 29 Working Party guidelines on personal data breach notification.
But you would not normally need to notify the ICO, for example, about the loss or inappropriate alteration of a staff telephone list.
The theft of a customer database, whose data may be used to commit identity fraud, would need to be notified, given its likely impact on those individuals who could suffer financial loss or other consequences.
You need to assess this case by case, looking at all relevant factors. Other breaches can significantly affect individuals whose personal data has been compromised. Some personal data breaches will not lead to risks beyond possible inconvenience to those who need the data to do their job. This means that a breach can have a range of adverse effects on individuals, which include emotional distress, and physical and material damage.
Breach and clear deadline decisions walkthrough professional#
“A personal data breach may, if not addressed in an appropriate and timely manner, result in physical, material or non-material damage to natural persons such as loss of control over their personal data or limitation of their rights, discrimination, identity theft or fraud, financial loss, unauthorised reversal of pseudonymisation, damage to reputation, loss of confidentiality of personal data protected by professional secrecy or any other significant economic or social disadvantage to the natural person concerned.” Remember, the focus of risk regarding breach reporting is on the potential negative consequences for individuals. Recital 87 of the UK GDPR says that when a security incident takes place, you should quickly establish whether a personal data breach has occurred and, if so, promptly take steps to address it, including telling the ICO if required. In short, there will be a personal data breach whenever any personal data is accidentally lost, destroyed, corrupted or disclosed if someone accesses the data or passes it on without proper authorisation or if the data is made unavailable and this unavailability has a significant negative effect on individuals.