IN DEPTH ‘‘
James Nock, Head of Data Protection and FOI services at HEFESTIS Ltd.
Charlotte Smith, School Librarian, King’s Ely.
www.cilip.org.uk/DataConf25
Basic data protection training is usually mandatory. However, what we are talking about now is moving beyond this level of data processing into data management. – Charlotte Smith
Data protection responsibility is in your hands
With more and more job roles requiring a practical understanding of data governance, CILIP’s new one-day conference is a chance to move beyond the basics. With expert insight and sector specific advice from a range of speakers, this month’s CILIP Data Protection Conference is your chance to build confidence and grow your knowledge. Here we hear from two of this year’s speakers – James Nock and Charlotte Smith. Book now at
www.cilip.org.uk/DataConf25.
James Nock
PEOPLE are often surprised by the way that data protection obligations are arranged – especially regarding data controllers and data processors. People often expect – and they can be forgiven for this – that if you, as a data con- troller, hand personal data to a data processor to perform a task under contract and they make a mistake – for example a data breach – then it will be the processor in the ‘firing line’. However, in most cases it is the data controller squarely in the ‘firing line’.
The law sees the data controller as the body ulti- mately responsible for the safety and lawfulness of personal data whether it is held/processed by the controller, or by a processor on their behalf. The Ticketmaster case is a great example of this: Tick- etmaster employed a company to provide a chatbot for its website and took some steps to ensure the chatbot would be secure. The chatbot was infected with malicious code that allowed attackers access to personal data of Ticketmaster’s customers. It was Ticketmaster – not the chatbot supplier – who was fined by the ICO. I would encourage controllers to think of their responsibilities as ‘Alpha to Omega’ and to never assume that data processors (even big companies) will have great data protection controls. I encourage a healthy sense of paranoia to protect yourself and your customers.
36 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Controllers should have a strict, formal, and inescapable due diligence process as part of their procurement controls. That is due diligence to en- sure processors can meet the required information security and data protection standards – noting that these standards depend on the level of risk associat- ed with the planned processing of personal data. Article 28 of the General Data Protection Regu- lation (GDPR) requires that controllers “shall use only processors providing sufficient guarantees to implement appropriate technical and organisational measures.”. If you haven’t done any (or enough) checks and it goes wrong, how will you demonstrate that you procured ‘sufficient guarantees’ of the sup- plier’s protective measures?
The big question I often hear is “how much due diligence is enough?”. The answer is a lot more than most people think. A great example is that a lot of due diligence checks only extend to just asking for security certifications – tick in box. But a great indi- cation of the ICO’s strict approach to due diligence checks is a passage from its Ticketmaster notice: “The Commissioner places little weight on the mere provision of such certifications… as a mechanism of securing the chat bot in the circumstances.”. Make sure that each due diligence exercise covers the specific risks and features of a product or project. I recommend working with your data protection and ICT teams to develop a risk-based due diligence framework including question sets
Summer 2025
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