Reforms to EU Data Protection laws increase accountability for businesses |
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| Governance | |
| Written by Paul Williams | |
| Tuesday, 24 January 2012 | |
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New law would also require businesses to take greater steps to demonstrate compliance with data protection regulations.
Reforms announced today to European data protection laws will force businesses to take more care over the way they store and destroy sensitive and confidential information, says the European head of Shred-it, a leading information destruction company. However, the draft new law would also require businesses to take greater steps to demonstrate compliance with data protection regulations and increase the penalties for non-compliance fines potentially reaching up to five per cent of global annual turnover. Currently, in the UK, £500,000 is the largest fine that can be imposed on an organisation for breaching UK data protection laws by the government's data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). The Executive Vice President EMEA of information destruction experts Shred-it, Robert Guice, said: "We saw a marked increase in business following the last increase in the powers of the ICO (March 2010) but it seems that many companies and public sector organisations have slipped back into bad ways since. "The Directive published today and the powers it will give to the ICO will hopefully serve as a timely wake-up call to any business that still does not have a proper data management and destruction system in place." It is expected that, under the new rules, public and private sector organisations with more than 250 employees must appoint an independent data protection officer in order to safeguard against lost, stolen and breached data. Their role will be to monitor whether the processing activities are carried out in compliance with the data protection policy and the new law. Guice advised organisations now needing to reappraise their information management regimes that: "The first stage of ensuring your organisation is safe from the risk of data breaches and is compliant with the law is to draw up a data protection policy. "And, although the safe disposal of electronic equipment such as hard drives, USBs and laptops has to be paramount, you will still need to be clear about how printed documents will be securely destroyed. All the firewalls and passwords in the world will prevent not the risk of paper documents being lost or stolen from insecure bins and ordinary disposal methods."
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