What is a Government Data Breach?
This when a Government body holding sensitive, personal and financial information and data about you breaches your information when it is lost, sold, misplaced, hacked and or stolen.
How is your Data Breached?
There are many ways that Government can breach your data and the most common cause are:
- Human error (which accounts for up to 90% of all data breaches)
- Not securely sharing your data with third parties or other government agencies
- Internal policy and security failings
- Negligence
- Cyber criminals -around 20 million attacks on Governments every year!
Is a Government Data Breach Serious?
Yes of course, governments hold and have access to some of the most sensitive data in the country so it is expected that your Government looks after that data securely. Unfortunately this isn’t always the case and data can be compromised even by our own government, public sector and government agencies. This can have huge implications for ourselves as well as being the number one threat to national security.
Governments have always been the target for attacks for this very reason and with the implementation of storing data digitally, cyber crime and cyber attacks against the government have risen. It is now estimated that the government comes under cyber attack millions of times a year with almost a quarter of all Councils successfully attacked. There have been 98 million cyber attacks on the Government within a 5 year span and that figure is increasing every year as cyber criminals grow in sophistication.
Can I Make a Claim?
Yes, its easy and simple to make a claim and speak with our experts and solicitors to get free initial legal advice on whether your data has been breached by the government.
By law (GDPR) it is illegal if the government fails to inform you that your data has been breached, hacked, compromised or lost and that is the easiest way to know whether you have a claim for data breach.
You can make a claim against any government body, public sector and government agency including and not limited to:
- The council including local and regional councils
- A local Authority
- A government agency
- An MP
- A civil servant
- Private Government Companies and contractors
Even if your data breach has not resulted in a financial loss we can still help you to claim compensation for any stress and inconvenience.
So if your personal data and information has not been properly protected, you have a right to claim compensation even when you haven’t suffered financially as a result.
CEL Solicitors will provide free initial advice as to whether or not we consider that you have a data breach and we will take the stress away from making a claim by contacting the relevant government body responsible for the breach and holding them accountable by getting you the justice and compensation you deserve.
How much compensation do you get for a Government data breach claim?
You can be awarded compensation for:
- Financial loss
- Breach of data
- Distress and inconvenience
We deal with each case on an individual basis as each case and circumstances are as unique as you. The amount of compensation you may receive will depend on:
- the severity of your circumstances
- the sensitivity of the data
- the amount of financial loss
- the severity of any associated emotional distress caused
- as well as any other relevant factors
On average at CEL Solicitors our clients receive almost £2,000 for a data breach, which is much higher than the £750 outlined in test law however as stated above this can increase to up to £25,000+ or decrease depending on the individual circumstances of the case and severity of the data breach.
