The Information Commissioner’s Office issued a press release and summary analysis of breaches:
With the number of breaches involving people’s personal information reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) reaching 1000, the privacy watchdog is urging organisations to minimise the risk of mistakes. Staff need simple procedures on how to handle personal information with appropriate training to ensure the importance of personal information is fully understood.
The entire press release can be found here.
The government’s analysis of the 1007 breaches indicates that stolen data or stolen hardware accounted for the most common cause of breaches, with 307 breaches of this kind. Of those 307 thefts, 116 were reported by the NHS. The second most common source of reported breaches was disclosure errors (254), followed closely by lost data or lost hardware (233).
Comparing sectors, NHS (their public healthcare sector) accounted for 305 breaches, followed closely by the private sector (288 breaches).