Category Archives: Personal Information

(GDPR – General Data Protection Regulations 2016)

Bit of history to put things into perspective, in 1950, the Council of Europe created an international treaty to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in Europe. Article 8 provides a right to respect for one’s “private and family life, his home and his correspondence”. The OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data was published in 1980, this defined the data controller and personal information. A year later EU Treaty 108 was drafted which which espouses the Eight principles for protecting personal data. There are many other notable Acts of Parliament, including the Data Protection Act 1984 and Computer Misuse Act 1990. Let’s get to the present day.

GDPR is the culmination of efforts to update the EU Data Protection Directive, 95/46/EC that was ratified in 1995.

There are 99 articles and hundreds of recitals in the GDPR. I’ll present that in a GAP analysis in the future.

Bottomline

The Good news

The underlying reasons for having the GDPR hasn’t changed from the EU Data Protection Directive of 1995, the tenets are broadly the same.
Lawful processing, accuracy, appropriate technical controls etc still form the core of the GDPR.

However, as always, the devil’s in the details.

What has changed ..?

The reach of the new regulation is significantly extended.

The potential penalties are designed to be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”. Based on a two-tier basis of 2%/4% of global turnover or 10m/20m Euros, whichever is greater.

Data Protection breaches will be taken more seriously.

Transparency. Accountability. Consent. Portability.
Breach notification. Certification. Data Protection Officer. Privacy by design.

Using tricks to opt people in will regarded in a negative light and is not in line with transparency.

The C suite will be accountable for Data Protection, not something which is loosely delegated to someone in IT.

Personal Data Breaches, the ICO must be notified within 72 hours.

Data Controllers must implement data portability in a commonly used format.

A Simple Checklist

Does your business collect, store or process personal data (anything that identifies an individual of the EU) ?
(That includes customer lists, membership details, medical records, delivery addresses, cookies and other identifying markers)
Does your business have customers in any EU state ?
Does your business intend to retain or gain new customers in any EU state after Brexit ?
Does your business intend to partner with EU entities that serve EU customers between now and Brexit ?
Does your business intend to partner with EU entities that serve EU customers after Brexit ?

A “Yes” or may be means that your organisation will be better placed if it aligns it’s governance and policies soon, as it is likely to take time to adopt and implement.

This is not an IT exercise – this needs to be owned at C or board level and this must be demonstrable.

Also, don’t forget that the UK is still in the EU and it will take a minimum of 2 years for Brexit to complete, which takes us into 2019, a year after GDPR is in effect.

For non-UK readers (and companies), there are no geo-boundaries to this. Your company may be based in South Africa, but if you have EU customers (non-company), you need to comply.

Some questions that need to be addressed
Will the UK retain the GDPR after Brexit ? If it doesn’t, the UK will need introduce something broadly similar if she intends to trade with the remaining EU members. Which requires time and money.

My money is on the UK adopting the GDPR and applying some judicious derogations, enough to gain some flexibility, but retain compatibility.

On a similar vein, keep any eye on how the issue with US Safe Harbor/ Privacy Shield and Ireland Data Protection challenge of model contract clauses plays out in the near future.

Another day, another Data Breach – OPM – US government’s Office of Personnel Management

14 July, 2015 Chun Wong

I’m sure you’ve seen this one in the news already. I have resisted commenting immediately, so that we can all take a step back and avoid knee-jerk, reactive comments.

21.5m USA federal employees and associates PI lost

Breach occurred over 12 months

In a nutshell, the personal data of 21.5m US government personnel was pilfered for more than 12 months. This included names, addresses, social security number (similar to the UK National Insurance number), position in the government and biometric data. Foreign contacts were also in the data haul. Background checks for the last 15 years, of friends, associates and information required for security clearance roles were lost. This information may potentially expose federal employee’s to unfavourable actions.

There were either no or insufficient controls in place to protect the data, control access, detect data leakage or detect malware. Apparently it was only due to a security tool demonstration that the breach was discovered at all.

Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12787823.htm

The fallout has been severe; Katherine Archuleta, The Director of the US Office of Personnel Management has resigned in the wake of further revelations about the scale of the hacking attack on the agency. She had been in the role for two years. The insecurity of OPM services was already known and documented in an earlier audit by the US Inspector General as unsafe, some as far back as 2007. The Director accepted the risk and kept the servers running without sufficient mitigation. Other findings included using servers that were unable to employ encryption and inadequate authentication.

Audit recommendations not properly mitigated

Although there was an upgrade plan underway, her mitigation strategy was not-fit-for-purpose and did not reflect the risk and vulnerabilities at the OPM.

This has echoes of the 2014 Target Breach, where management were aware of serious issues, but under-played and ignored advice. This neatly highlights the fact that you can have independent audit, but if the risk is not owned by the board, properly interpreted and mitigated, you are leaving your organisation (or indeed country) open to threats.

I have also deliberately avoided the more political aspects of this breach; It is the duty of all countries to spy on another, for gain, for war and for peace. Blaming one country or another for your own failings is disingenuous at best and totally blinkered to the realities of our world.

Further reading

https://www.opm.gov/cybersecurity/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/us/office-of-personnel-management-hackers-got-data-of-millions.html?_r=0

http://www.cio.com/article/2947453/data-breach/how-opm-data-breach-could-have-been-prevented.html

http://www.cio.com/article/2945425/data-breach/the-opm-lawsuit-will-only-make-the-lawyers-rich.html

Data Loss, Data Protection, Personal Information

Ponemon Institute – 2015 Cost of Data Breach Study: United States

29 May, 2015 Chun Wong

US study at a glance

$6.5 million is the average total cost of data breach 11% increase in total cost of data breach

$217 is the average cost per lost or stolen record

8% increase in cost per lost or stolen record

Highlights from the report

As in the ICO (UK) Data Breach report, healthcare comes number 1 in the charts, this time for the cost of each breach.

The report is definitely worth spending time reading. It highlights the following points for minimising the cost and impact of security breaches :

Board-level engagement and CISO leadership
Employee training
A relevant and up-to-date incident response plan and team
Targeted use of encryption
BCM integration
Insurance protection

These are the fundamental building blocks of an ISMS (information Security Management System), found in ISO27001, COBIT5 and others.

The Ponemon Institute report

Data Loss, Data Protection, Personal Information

UK Healthcare sector accounted for 40% of data breaches

29 May, 2015 Chun Wong

2014 Q4 figures released by the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) reveals that of the data breaches reported to them, over 40% originated from the healthcare sector. Local government and education are a distant 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Source : ICO Q4 2014 Data Breach figures

The vast majority of these were attributed to human error, broken down into detail in the next chart.

Source : ICO Q4 2014 Data Breach figures

Principle 7 failure originates from inadequate technical controls.

The ICO states :

Appropriate technical and organisational measures shall be taken against unauthorised or unlawful processing of personal data and against accidental loss or destruction of, or damage to, personal data.

Chun’s View

The raw figures indicate that the healthcare sector is prone to unintended personal information exposure (bear in mind these numbers haven’t been normalised), it could be that this sector’s threshold for reporting is lower, It does reinforce the point that the majority of data leaks are due to human error.

Mitigation

Board-level sponsorship of Data Protection and Information Security training, as part of a larger learning and development regime, is essential. It must be viewed by the organisational population as worthwhile.

This must be formalised into the training strategy and woven into the Employees Handbook and Security Policy of the organisation.

As well as regular training targeting people who handle personal data, the training quality assurance is provided by the tracking of training metrics, such as completion and pass rates. With a sufficient data set, this may be correlated against the number of incidents reported. Incident rates may actually increase, as more may be reported when people are more aware of their obligations.

Parting words

Whichever sector you’re in, guarding against unintentional exposure of personal information is essential to maintaining your organisation’s reputation and avoiding the attention of the ICO.

World Leader’s PI leaked

30 March, 2015 Chun Wong

The personal details of all 31 leaders at the recent G20 summit in Australia have been accidentally leaked by the Australian immigration department. Despite being notified of the high-profile breach four months ago, it neglected to inform anyone.

The details included passport numbers, visa details and other particulars of each leader at the summit.

Tony Abbott and Vladimir Putin cuddle koalas before the start of the first G20 meeting in November 2014. Photograph: Andrew Taylor/G20 Australia/Getty Images

In a letter obtained under Freedom of Information requests, it’s been revealed that a staffer at the G20 leaders summit staged in Australia last November mistakenly mailed a list of the leaders’ personal details to an official at the Asian Football Cup Local Organising Committee.

Although the information hasn’t been publicly exposed and is unlikely to be of use for nefarious purposes, not many people are likely to pretend to be Vladimir Putin or David Cameron. The damage is reputational and is certainly embarrassing for the Australian government. Ironically it had just recently passed controversial mandatory metadata retention laws.

Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015

International Business Times article on the new Australian Bill and obligations of ISPs

The Guardian’s article on the new Australian Bill

Security Notes