Bravo BS 10012!

Almost one in five UK businesses have breached the Data Protection Act at least once – so found a BSI survey of 500 SME’s recently. That’s worrying news indeed, given that there’s around 5 million small-to-medium sized businesses in GB dealing in all manner of sensitive personal information, ranging from credit card numbers and addresses to ethnic origin and criminal records, on a daily basis.

So great to see BSI Group launching the first British Standard designed specifically to promote data management best practice – BS 10012. The Data Protection Act (DPA) is certainly very detailed and a rather intimidating document to the uninitiated, but given BSI’s finding that 65 per cent of SME’s provide nothing in the way of data protection training for their staff, this is a data management ‘best practice’ Everest we’d surely all do well to climb and conquer as quickly and effectively as possible.

If you’re interested (and I hope those of you who don’t have adequate data handling policies/strategies in place will be!), BSI is running a conference entitled Information Governance & Data Protection Standards, Guidance and Best Practice from June 30 – July 1. For details, visit www.bsigroup.com/conferences.