Data breaches: new Article 29 Working Party guidance

In anticipation of the GDPR, various guidance has been published by the Article 29 Working Party, the body of national EU data regulators.

Of most relevance in the cyber context is the guidance on personal data breach notifications; the Article 29 Working Party issued its initial guidance in October 2017 and published a final version of the guidelines (which remained mostly unchanged) in February 2018.

This guidance relates to the new requirement under the GDPR for all controllers to notify the appropriate data protection authority of a personal data breach, following a cyber attack for example. This will include providing the regulator with a significant amount of information about the breach and marks a change from the previous regime (under the Data Protection Act 1998) where notification to the ICO was not mandatory, although the ICO encouraged notification for serious breaches.

The key areas addressed by the guidance include further clarity on what constitutes awareness of a breach, when notification is and is not required in respect of examples of different types of breaches, when the clock starts running in relation to the 72 hour deadline and how to manage conflicting requirements of the GDPR and those of law enforcement authorities outside of the EU. For further information, a copy of the guidance can be found here.