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Almost 20% of firms 'have breached data protection laws'

Published on 3 Jun 2009 under category: legal

Nearly a fifth of businesses have unknowingly committed breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998, opening themselves to civil litigation or professional negligence claims, a new report suggests.

A study by BSI finds that another 18 per cent do not know whether or not they have infringed the legislation, with 65 per cent offering no training in this field to their staff.

Mike Low, director of standards at BSI, says that the complexity of the laws surrounding this area mean that compliance can be hard to achieve.

He states: "While it is encouraging that some already have appropriate data protection measures in place this survey shows that there is still a long way to go."

Mr Low says that this is despite these organisations handling large amounts of information covered by the act on a daily basis.

According to the Data Protection Act, there are eight principles governing the use and processing of data, including the fact it must not be retained for longer than is needed for its intended purpose.