France Moves to Guard Private Information

With several high-profile data protection breaches taking place worldwide in recent times many governments are considering what they have to do to further protect their voters ' information and, indeed, their own state info. As of August 24th 2011, updates to the French Data Protection Act of 1978 have been strengthened and bolstered with a new piece of legislation known as 'Ordinance'.

This is especially focused at shielding private info that is processed over a public network as a part of electronic communications services.

In the primary this has effects on telecoms operators and web service suppliers. Till now, such operators haven't been required to inform anybody when a breach happened and unless it has had a wide-ranging, interesting impact, things have been hushed up. The Ordinance now needs any breach to be reported. It defines a break as being the modification, annihilation or loss of personal information, or declaration and unauthorized access to personal information. Service suppliers in France would do well to take heed of the new legislation and the requirements to keep a stockpile of any security break that must definitely be available to the French Data Protection Authority at any time.

The significance being placed on the security of personal data is formed extremely clear by the potential penalties for a break, or the omission to maintain an inventory. Non-compliance will see probably five years imprisonment and a fine of 300,000. The good news is this will potentially see providers beefing up their security and an increase in info encryption which must be seen as one of the most significant elements in securing personal data.

Info encryption is doubly critical as if a provider can demonstrate they have taken necessary steps to attempt to forestall information being accessible or understandable to unapproved parties, the French Data Protection Authority may not need the breach to be informed to customers with the inevitable loss of buyer confidence this might bring.

Tags: encrypted flash drive | USB encryption | data protection |




France Moves to Guard Private Information