ICO takes action against Google

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) have written to the world's leading search engine Google to advise them their recent Google Street View project significantly breached the Data Protection Act.

Since April 2010, The ICO have had the power to impose fines of up to £500,000 on organisations who breach the Data Protection Act. Within this legislation includes specific reference to the encryption of data.

"Organisations can minimise the risks of security breaches involving personal information by ensuring that all portable media devices containing personal information are encrypted. Staff must be adequately trained and organisations should give proper consideration to restricting staff from downloading large volumes of data onto memory sticks and other portable devices. All personal information held within buildings and offices should be protected by adequate security arrangements to prevent theft or the loss of the data."

The full legislation is available on the ICO website.

Google's breach is so far the highest profile case and has resulted in Christopher Graham, who is appointed as Information Commissioner by HM The Queen writing directly to Google, who will now have to sign an indemnity to appear on the ICO's website as well as be subject to a full ICO audit. Christopher Graham said, "It is my view that the collection of this information was not fair or lawful and constitutes a significant breach of the first principle of the Data Protection Act."

"The most appropriate and proportionate regulatory action in these circumstances is to get written legal assurance from Google that this will not happen again - and to follow this up with an ICO audit."

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Redstor Online Backup is an automated backup service, your data is sent over your existing internet connection to one of our secure Data Centres before mirroring to our secondary Data Centre for Disaster Recovery purposes. From the moment the data leaves your site, whilst in transit and right the way through until it resides in our Data Centres; it's fully encrypted to give you that peace of mind your data is secure and protected off-site.

If you're unsure of the current level of protection for your data then you should call the Data Protection specialists Redstor on 0118 9515 200.