By 2020, the UK Police experienced more than 2,300 data breaches

The UK Police is responsible for 2386 data breach incidents last year. VPN Overview, which requested data from 45 police stations, received this information, but received only 31 responses. Of the 31 respondents, 22 reported security breaches in the past year.

“In 2020 alone, 2386 data breaches were reported by 22 police stations […] We list all the police stations that told us they had data breaches in 2020, ”writes David Johnson, Founder Security Analyst at VPNOverview.

According to Johnson, the average data breach by UK police stations reaches nearly 300 per police station from 2016 to the beginning of this year.

“The results show that from 2016 to 2021 the national average for a police station was 299 data breaches. The Lancashire Constabulary is the UK’s “worst” data breach. They revealed that they had to deal with 1300 data breaches in their files. The Cheshire Constable encountered similar problems, reporting a total of 1193 data breaches. [Já] The Sussex police force is 980 times more likely to expose confidential information, ”he explains.

Violations analyzed in the study are combinations of human errors, Such as when an employee sends confidential information via email to misleading recipients, As well as cyber attacks and data compromises by third parties.

The study found that 237 officers and staff had been punished for allowing these violations, and that 6 had resigned during internal investigations. Eleven people were fired for misusing computers and corporate data.

In 2015, Wales (which is part of the United Kingdom) was fined 160 160,000 (approximately R $ 1.2 million) for disappearing with encrypted DVDs containing “highly sensitive” recordings from an interview with a victim of sexual abuse, according to Infosecurity magazine.

The survey data can be found at the link below.

Source: VPNoverview; Infosecurity Magazine.