New powers for the Information Commissioners Office

From the 6th April 2010 the ICO now has the power to fine organisations (up to £500,000) that breach the Data Protection Act 1998. This means every organisation will have to review the way they take and handle information from their customers.

More information can be obtained from the Information Commissioners Office and you can down load their statutory guidance here.

Over the past few years INTEC has carried out various research projects on the use of ‘Potentially Violent Person Registers’ or ‘Difficult Customer Databases’. This research has found several areas of concern in the way local authorities handle this information in particular. There has been a tendency to look upon the list purely as a safety issue, and not really look into the data protection issues surrounding this data. Many authorities still adopt a simple spreadsheet to record this data which could potentially breach several of the Data protection regulations.

INTEC’s InCheck Protector Software meets all the data protection guidelines and can provide a system that ensures all your employees can carry out the necessary security checks on customers without breaching data protection guidelines. For more information click here.