UK Cyber Security and Data Privacy Legislation: Your Essential Guide

Several countries across the globe have adopted Cybersecurity Regulations to provide legislative protection measures against cyber breaches. The United Kingdom also facilitates several laws and regulations that adequately protect organizations and individual bodies from malware actors, hackers, and phishers.

These laws ensure the appropriate penalty charges for the guilty party. Although, there is no prescription of any penalty for the victim organizations, there are some sanctions that would be imposed on them due to their failure for not implementing required safeguard solutions to protect the company’s data from falling into wrong hands.

Here, we’ll be getting brief details about the UK Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Regulations –

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) Regulations

This regulation came into force on 25th May 2018. It, along with the Data Protection Act 2018, governs the privacy of personal data and broadens the risk landscape for all the entities dealing with the processing of personal data.

Both the GDPR and the 2018 Act require businesses to implement security measures to safeguard the personal data that they process.

The GDPR ensures the safer processing and usage of personal data by businesses and aims to provide a safer digital marketplace for consumers across Europe. It empowers the obligations of individuals to access their data, to get it erased or transferred as mentioned in the DPA 2018 but also presents some very important features.

Accountability, Data Portability, Consent: These three principles are the basis of this regulation. The principle of accountability requires that the organizations and businesses are processing the personal data of the individuals in an appropriate manner. A simple cybersecurity compromise won’t lead to the penalty but the circumstances and intentions surrounding it might.

Penalty Charges against the Guilty Party

Fine charges up to £17.5 million or 4% annual global turnover of the company, whichever is higher.

NIS Regulations

While GDPR deals with the regulation of personal data, the NIS (Network & Information Systems) regulations deal with the security of information systems.

The UK government presented this regulation directive in the Houses of Parliament on 20th April 2018 but it came into force in May 2018 as ‘the Network and Information System Regulations 2018’.

The NIS regulations impose legal obligations to secure the network systems (cyber as well as physical resilience) that are prone to Digital Service Providers (DSPs) and Operators of Essential Services (OES) that provide necessary services to the citizens within UK.

The DSPs are mainly categorized into three groups; Online Search Engines, Cloud Computing Services, Online Marketplaces, and the OES includes UK’s energy, transport, health, water, and digital infrastructure sectors.

The Regulations do not apply to ‘micro or small enterprise’ DSPs (employing fewer than 50 people and having annual turnover and/or balance sheet total is less than £8.7 million).

Penalty Charges against the Guilty Party

The penalty charges for breaching the NIS regulations are up to £17 million.

Data Protection Act 2018

The Data Protection Act 2018 controls the proceedings of your private information that is being used by businesses, organizations, or the government.

For any third-party that is using your data, it is necessary to follow some strict rules under this act, referred to as ‘data protection rules’. These rules ensure that your data is protected all the time and is being used explicitly and adequately.

It also gives the citizens of the UK the right to know about their personal information being held and used by the government or other bodies. Also, it empowers you with many legal rights such as erasing, transferring, or updating personal data, raising objections for its wrong usage, etc.

Furthermore, if you are troubled that many applications and websites use your data to predict your behavior, choices, preferences, or interests, you can always object against it.

Any individual entity or an organization that stores and processes the personal data of any individual person, client, customer, user, or anyone, is legally obligated to keep it protected.

Charges & Penalties Against the Guilty Party

• Fair possibility of Criminal Prosecution

• Fine charges upto £500,000 for any critical security breach

Wrap Up

In addition to the GDPR, NIS, and DPA 2018, the UK government also imposes some other regulations that subject to provide secure electronic communication. For instance, the Privacy & Electronic Communication Regulations 2003 provide special sets of specific rights related to electronic communications such as email, texts, traffic, location, marketing calls, etc.

It is important that every UK individual understands their rights so when it comes to protecting them, he can proceed with his obligations.