If you & your brand were thinking that you could get away with incidents of data theft and loss, think again ! The security industry is planning to come up with stringent and stricter rules which will lead to sever penalties for any cases that report data loss.

These new rules have been issued by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) and are all set to be rolled out starting 1st week of April. According to Clearswift CEO Richard turner, the level of financial penalty is set to rise to a maximum of £500 000 (from £5 000), for those companies who do not comply with the Act.

Apparently, Clearswift has been helping organizations to equip themselves with the most sophisticated content inspection technology in the industry & protect companies of confidential data.

According to Turner, “Organisations can no longer ignore the seriousness of corporate data breaches and not complying with the Data Protection Act. On 6th April 2010, the Information Commissioner is upping the financial penalties to act as a deterrent for companies who flout these rules”.

In a recent incident, Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) had reprimanded the Royal London Mutual Insurance Society for breaching the Data Protection Act. The penalty was issued after the theft of eight of the firm’s laptops, two of which contained details of 2,135 people from the company’s Edinburgh offices. The data were password protected but unencrypted.

What the Analysts Say

Industry analysts have expressed their view points on the imposition of these fines,

Susan Hall, partner and IT specialist at Cobbetts thinks, “These new fines will have a profound impact on internal procedures, especially at medium-sized, data-rich businesses, whose growth commonly outmatches their internal development and the maintenance of procedures”.

Dave Ellis, e-security director at security distributor Computerlinks said, “Mid-market firms have not been under as much pressure so this should open up some good opportunities.”

Stewart Room, a keynote speaker at Infosecurity Europe & partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP, believes that organisations need to focus on two vital aspects: the system and the operations. The system defines the security position via documented rules, policies and procedures. Operations details out the implementation of system in daily activities. According to Stewart, in a recent online poll a third of organisations admitted if they have experienced a security breach tomorrow they do not have a system in place to adequately deal with the incident.

Go Secure, Choose Alertsec Now

Alertsec is the frontrunner in offering hard disk encryption as a fully managed service. We provide protection for all information stored on laptops and PCs in an easy, convenient, and cost-effective way. By using industry leading Check Point Full Disk Encryption (former Pointsec) software, Alertsec has created a web based encryption service that radically simplifies deployment and management of PC encryption. Alertsec Xpress offers computer security software from Check Point as a fully customizable and pre-packaged data encryption software solution.

For further information, please email us on info@alertsec.com.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Penalties for data breaches increase (accountancyage.com)
• UK firms urged to review security strategy (channelweb.co.uk)
• UK Information Commissioner Can Fine Company £500,000 (alertboot.com)

• Previous Entry: Some of Our Happy Customers
• Next Entry: Report on Spam Sending Countries