Don't be tomorrow's Headline - ICO Annouces £500k fines as of April 2010

As reported recently online by Nick Heath and others Companies that lose individuals' sensitive personal data will face a fine of up to £500,000 under powers expected to come into force from April.

The powers will allow the UK's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office, to fine private and public sector organisations that commit a serious breach of the Data Protection Act.

Justice minister Michael Wills laid a statutory instrument before Parliament on Tuesday, setting the maximum fine at £500,000. The instrument will become law by default on 6 April this year, unless Parliament objects.

All very topical since we are (in conjunction with IBM) running an Event covering - The importance of Web application security - today's most significant online threat.

A few of the guys from our team will be heading along to this Scotland IS event in Edinburgh.  Especially since in this area we have the skills to pay the bills  ;-).

So if you are one of the majority of people whose spending on IT Security is in all the wrong places perhaps we and this event can help.  The event is targeted for IT staff.

IT is a useful truth however that the buck rarely stops with IT in my experience from a Data Protection responsibility perspective.  So if that's you and you are not IT we can come and speak to you about this stuff and help you determine whether you are properly protected or not.  It's all about the due diligence - not the geeking out.  Though I, like many others enjoy geeking out.

Here's a little something to chew on from a cost and risk perspective...

Gartner research indicated that 75% of today's attacks occur at the application level and 80% of organizations will experience an application security incident by 2010.  Internal security attacks cost US business $400 Billion annually.

 Are you confident this won’t happen to you?

A North American Retailer claimed that over 45.6 million cards belonging to customers were compromised in an intrusion that went undetected for over 18 months; however, several banks suing the company claim the actual number is 94 million cards, a vast majority of them issued by Visa. The breach prompted numerous lawsuits and calls for stronger data protection laws. By the retailers own estimates, the company has spent or set aside close to US$250 million for costs stemming from the incident.

Catch Problems Early with IBM Rational Application Security Solutions

Call Seric today to find out how 0141 561 1161