IT Governance Blog on IT governance, risk management, compliance and information security.

At this moment in time, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) are going through two Government consultations which will see the introduction of new penalties, unlike any seen before, for breaches of the data protection act (DPA) 1998. The ICO have also been granted new statutory powers to audit government departments.

The data protection ragime in the UK has never looked so intimidating!

What penalties are likely to be available to the ICO?

• Fines of up to £500,000 for serious contraventions of the DPA;
• 25 Monetary Penalty Notices (MPNs) are expected to be issued each year by the ICO;
• Prison Sentences for deliberate or negligent customer data leaks by individuals within an organisation;
• DPA compliance costs are set to rise accordingly, for UK organisations.

What are the two government consultations about?

1. The first consultation is on the maximum level of civil penalties for serious data protection breaches. The Ministry of Justice’s consultaion marks the last stage in bringing in this new enforcement power of the ICO.
2. The second consultation is on whether a custodial sentence should be introduced for the offence under section 55 of the DPA of knowingly or recklessly obtaining or disclosing personal data and, if so, what the maximum sentence should be.

The new statutory powers the ICO has just gained gives them the power to audit government departments without consent, thanks to the passing of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.

It is clear that there is now a narrow window of opportunity for organisations to review their privacy practices and information governance in order to prepare for what will be the much more hostile regulatory environment to come.

The good news is that the tools exist to help companies achieve compliance quickly and easily. We have recently launched the IT Governance Complete Data Protection Toolkit, which combines the: DPA Compliance Assessment Tool, the DPA Compliance Documentation Toolkit, the Data Protection Compliance in the UK pocket guide and the How to Survive a Data Breach pocket guide.

Comply with the DPA – Download this essential DPA Compliance Kit Today!

Tags: Data Protection Act, Data Security, DPA, Information Security

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 10:40 am and is filed under Data Breaches, Information Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.