Almost one in five SMEs has breached the Data Protection Act (DPA) according to new research findings by the national standards body BSI.
The 500 hundred respondents to the BSI survey admitted to contravening the DPA by either illegally transferring information to a third party, failing to hold information securely or neglecting other legal obligations.
The survey was conducted in May to determine how businesses manage their personal and sensitive information on staff and customers.
It appears that SMEs lack knowledge of the DPA as the surveyâs findings also showed that 15 per cent of respondents are not confident that their data sharing practices conform to the DPA. But despite this, almost five per cent of them have they frequently share data.
Another alarming finding was that half of those surveyed admit that there is no one in the business that has been assigned responsibility for data protection.
Mike Low, director of Standards BSI comments: âThese organisations are handling vast amounts of personal information on a daily basis and 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.â
The findings come as the BSI recently published a British Standard on data protection â BS10012 – to help businesses develop their own framework for data protection legislation and good practice.
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