The ICO has confirmed a data breach from Kent councils.  The breach was reported by three Kent councils who share the same IT support provider.  Canterbury, Dover and Thanet councils continue to be hampered by the disruptions of onlines services following a cyber incident.

Did you know that annual cyber security training for school staff is a requirement in the DfE Digital Standards for Schools and Colleges Cyber Security Standards Document?

The DfE have recently published an update to their meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges, with three new sections:
Digital Accessibility Standards
Digital Leadership and Governance Standards
Laptop, desktop and tablet standards

Understanding where your data is stored is crucial for both records management (data retention) and retrieving personal data in cases of Subject Access Requests.  This article looks at where Microsoft 365 stores it's data.

The City of London Police is warning schools across the UK to be vigilant against phishing attacks targeting school networks. Multiple schools have reported receiving suspicious emails containing malicious attachments that have infected their networks with malware.

Once infected, the school's email systems are used to send malicious attachments to other schools.

You don't have a pdf plugin, but you can download the pdf file.


Help and Advice against Phi

The ICO has recently published a reprimand for a multi academy trust.  The reprimand was issued in respect of Articles 5 (1) (f) and 32 (1) (b).  An unauthorised third party utilised compromised credentials to access and encrypt their systems.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) have announced the release of the Guidelines for Secure AI System Development.

The Trust Initial Plan Checklist has been updated to include a notes area for each section. This will allow you to record any ongoing tasks or actions for each section.

We have previously reported how the Rhysida Ransomware has focused on attacking the education sector.  Recently the CISA, FBI and MS-ISAC have released a new joint Cyber Security Advisory to disseminate known Rhysida ransomware indicators of compromise, detection methods, tactics, techniques and procedures identified through recent investigations.

An updated version of the Data Retention Workshop Powerpoint slides has been uploaded to the Records Management Best Practice Area:

As a data protection officer we are seeing a rise in the number of cyber attacks on organisations.  We often find that the fact an actual crime has been committed is sometimes overlooked in the panic and need to recover data and get operations back up and running.  According to the National Crime Agency (NCA) cyber crime continues to rise in scale and complexity, affecting essential services, businesses and private individuals.  Cyber crime costs the UK billions of pounds, causes

The National Cyber Security Centre looks back at it's key developments and highlights over the last year in it's 2023 annual review. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, is the UK’s technical authority for cyber security.