WIREDGOV

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect on the 25 May 2018.

The GDPR requires that personal data must be processed securely using appropriate technical & organisational measures.  The Regulation does not mandate a specific set of cyber security measures but rather expects you to take ‘appropriate’ action.  In other words you need to manage risk.

What is appropriate for you will depend upon your circumstances as well as the data you are processing and therefore the risks posed, however there is an expectation you have minimal, established security measures in place. The security measures must be designed into your systems at the outset (referred to as Privacy by Design) and maintained effective throughout the life of your system.

The NCSC have worked with the ICO to develop a set of GDPR Security Outcomes. This guidance provides an overview of what the GDPR says about security and describes a set of security related outcomes that all organisations processing personal data should seek to achieve.

The approach is based on four top level aims:

• manage security risk
• protect personal data against cyber attack
• detect security events, and
• minimise the impact

The ICO has published a lot of helpful guidance on its website.  A good starting point for advice on implementing security measures for the GDPR is existing good cyber security guidance.  Some good sources of information include the ICO 10 Steps to Cyber Security, Small Business Guide or the Cyber Essentials scheme. You can also share information, advice & intelligence about cyber risks online by joining the ICO CISP community.

If you are affected by an incident which involves (or is likely to involve) a breach of personal data, then you are likely to have an obligation under the GDPR to notify the ICO. The ICO provide more detailed detailed guidance  on their website about what constitutes a notifiable breach, preparing & responding to breaches.  You may also wish to report significant cyber incidents  to the NCSC.  

Two inter-twined themes about the NHS last week.

In First Theme a new report from the Institute for Government and The King’s Fund considers how the creation of NHS England has failed to take the politics out of healthcare provision in England.

NHS England – once dubbed ‘the world’s biggest quango’ was established 5 years ago by the Health & Social Care Act 2012 as a statutorily independent board with the aim of ending ‘political interference in the NHS’.  Yet the current Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt, has been as closely involved in NHS performance & planning as his predecessors.

Nor has its creation led to the NHS being run on "quasi-market" lines as its principal architect, Andrew Lansley, intended.  Instead – despite the fears of critics – the Act turned out to be the high-water mark of faith in choice & competition.  It has been followed by a return to a more managed system, with the balkanised bodies it created being slowly, but surely, brought together & merged.

In the Second Theme the IFS argues that, with the older population growing rapidly, along with the numbers suffering chronic health problems, and a growing pay & drugs bill, demands on the health service will only continue to grow.  Just to keep the NHS providing the level of service it does today will require us to increase spending by an average 3.3% a year for the next 15 years – with slightly bigger increases in the short run to address immediate funding problems.

At the same time, pressures on social care spending are increasing and, if we continue with something like the current funding arrangements, adult social care spending is likely to have to rise by 3.9% a year over the next 15 years taking an extra 0.4% of national income, relative to today.

Put these figures together and health & social care spending is likely to have to rise by 2–3% of national income over the next 15 years.

The UK Public Health Rapid Support Team is being deployed to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help control the outbreak of Ebola virus disease.

On 8 May 2018, the DRC Government declared a new outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), the country’s ninth outbreak. The latest situation report can be found on the WHO website.

The UK Public Health Rapid Support Team (UK-PHRST) has the capability to rapidly deploy public health experts at 48 hours’ notice in order to strengthen the in-country response, curtail the spread of disease, and ultimately save lives.

The deployment is in response to a call from the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network (GOARN).  The GOARN team, which the members of the UK-PHRST will be part of, is working closely with the government of the DRC to rapidly scale up its operations in response to the current outbreak.

Rivers & wildlife could be left without sufficient water unless action is taken to reduce water use & wastage, according to an Environment Agency report.