I got an email last week that a lot of people reading this will also have had. Manchester Airports Group wrote to tell me my data had been caught up in a cyber security incident. In my case it was the car parking, and not the cheap kind either, since I’d paid for it three
I can change a password. I can’t change my number plate. Read More »
Few stories illustrate the gap between “what data subjects think they agreed to” and “what actually happens to their data” as vividly as the one that broke in June 2026. Millions of people who spent years scanning parks, murals and landmarks to catch Pokémon on their smartphones have discovered that those scans didn’t stay in
Who knew you were pregnant before you did? There’s a story doing the rounds this week about a woman whose fitness tracker flagged her pregnancy weeks before a test did. Elevated resting heart rate, a shift in temperature, the usual pattern. It’s a nice human interest story, and it’s also, if you sit with it
Who knew you were pregnant before you did? Read More »
What Makes a Supplier (And When a Tool Is Not Simply a Tool) Every organisation I’ve worked with over the years has a supplier list. It sits somewhere in a spreadsheet, gets reviewed once a year around audit time, and contains the names you’d expect: the IT support company, the payroll provider, maybe a facilities
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The NHS doesn’t have a data security problem. It has a culture problem. This week, Cambridge University Hospitals referred itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office after it emerged that around 40 members of staff had accessed the medical records of a three-year-old boy injured in a crocodile attack. The child was treated at Addenbrooke’s following
The NHS doesn’t have a data security problem. It has a culture problem. Read More »
Banning Social Media for Under-16s: The Data Protection Question Nobody’s Answering So it’s official. This morning, the Prime Minister stood in Downing Street and announced a full ban on social media for children under 16. TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, YouTube, Reddit — the lot. Legislation before Christmas, enforcement potentially from Spring 2027. As a parent
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“From Boardrooms to Living Rooms”: What the GCHQ Director’s Bletchley Speech Really Said It’s rare for the Director of GCHQ to speak in public. Anne Keast-Butler said as much herself this morning, standing at Bletchley Park to deliver the first annual GCHQ lecture. The fact that she felt compelled to do so tells you something
“From Boardrooms to Living Rooms”: What the GCHQ Director’s Bletchley Speech Really Said Read More »
48 staff. No dismissals. No ICO investigation. The Southport records breach tells us everything we need to know about insider threat. When the news broke this week that 48 NHS staff had inappropriately accessed the medical records of Southport attack victims — and that the highest sanction any of them received was a final written
NHS Subject Access Request Failings: A Real‑World Case Study Yesterday should have been simple. My 14‑year‑old son needed his broken wrist re‑x‑rayed. A routine appointment, in and out, nothing remarkable. Except it turned into an unexpected case study in how not to handle Subject Access Requests (SARs) — and how easily well‑meaning NHS processes can […]
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️ The Afghan Data Breach – A Wake-Up Call for Public Sector Data Governance In July 2025, the veil of secrecy was finally lifted on one of the most catastrophic data breaches in UK government history. A spreadsheet leaked by a Ministry of Defence (MoD) official exposed the personal details of nearly 19,000 Afghan nationals […]
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