07/04/2017.

A senior barrister who stored clients’ personal information on a home computer has been fined £1,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office for breaching data security law after her husband temporarily uploaded the relevant files to the Internet while updating software on the computer.

‘Supervisory Powers of the Information Commissioner: Monetary Penalty Notice’ explains how unencrypted documents, containing confidential and highly sensitive information belonging to 250 people – including vulnerable adults and children – were temporarily uploaded to an internet directory, where they were visible to an internet search engine.

According to the ICO, the barrister – whose name was redacted in the penalty notice – overlooked her responsibility to protect her clients ‘for no good reason’.