The Olswang Cyber Alert

United Kingdom

This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.

Welcome to the first edition of Olswang's Cyber Alert, a regular round up of regulation, best practice and news from our international cyber breach and crisis management team. In each edition:

  • we will feature a longer article with commentary on a topical cybersecurity issue. In this edition, we consider cyber breaches in the retail world and the impact of the Target data breach
  • we will include updates on the latest security standards and benchmarks
  • we will report on the progress of the controversial draft General Data Protection Regulation and the Network and Information Security Directive
  • we will keep a watching brief on other cyber liability issues.

In the last few months we have seen news headlines ranging from state-sponsored hacking, arrests over the BlackShades malware, and the release of the latest Information Security Breaches Survey, not to mention continued concern over the Heartbleed vulnerability, so there is much for businesses to consider. See here for a summary of some of the latest headlines.

It is also worth mentioning the European Court of Justice's Google Spain ruling in May, which is arguably the most profound internet case of this decade and which continues to send shockwaves through the tech sector. Whilst Google Spain does not relate to cybersecurity specifically, it does establish that in some circumstances a non-European company is answerable to the European courts and accountable under European data protection laws, including the requirement for appropriate technical and organisational measures to be in place to protect personal data. Read Olswang's update on Google Spain here.

We hope you'll find our update useful and we welcome your feedback

Please click here to view a full copy of the Cyber Alert.