Typical Blogger P**s Poor Performance

Oh, what a fail!  It cannot be January since my last post.  I have fallen in to that age old trap of starting off so well and then letting time slip away beneath me.

I apologise!  However, SO much has been happening.  Those who follow my micro-blog tweets (What? You don’t! https://twitter.com/iLifecycle) will have seen a lot of it.

As a business it’s been a pronominal start to 2014.  What a great time to be growing a business. We completed a huge network infrastructure deal with a major OEM in March.  It sucked up a huge amount of time and resources but was delivery without hitch a full 8 days early and under budget.  I am extremely proud of my team for this achievement.

We also secured a major hard drive recovery project utilising a truly unique technical process which I would dearly love to tell you about but I can’t.  Again our technical team have done a fantastic job. 

Outside; the ICO have reported that data breaches have doubled in half a year.  The Target databreach just goes on and on and on. Possibly costing Target up to $18Bn… yes Bn.  We have also seen Experian the trusted custodian of our personal credit data embroiled in a scandal where they allegedly sold sensitive data to criminals.

Barclays fell afoul of a cleaver but simple breach where persons pretending to be IT staff attached a wireless KVM to a branch PC and then sat back watching everything that was going on on the screen from a safe distance.

Aviva staff appeared to have sold accident data to unscrupulous operators and a Pregnancy advice charity were finned £200k for failing to secure registered user data on their web site.

Perhaps even more important than the plethora of data breaches is the European Parliament voting to adopt its draught version of a reformed data protection Directive.  MEPs also increased the fines to be imposed on firms that break the rules to up to €100m or 5% of global turnover.

In my opinion this changes the data protection landscape for ever.  In the late 1990’s and early naughties I worked through the changes and impact of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive).  I actually think this will have a larger and more profound affect.

The Directives are issued to all 28 European members as an instruction to go away and put in place laws and regulations as set out in the directive.  This means we end up with 28 differing interpretations of the directive all implemented at different times however the core principles are maintained… or should be.

Ministers broadly supported the principle that non-European companies when offering goods and services to European consumers, will have to apply the EU data protection law in full. The next meeting of Justice Ministers on the data protection reform will take place in June 2014.

OK; so this will have an impact similar to Sarbanes Oxley did to business who do business with the USA.  If you wish to do business with the EU you will have to comply.  This will be huge.  Watch this space (I promise it will be updated in a timely manner from now one)!!