Morrisons loses data breach appeal

Supermarket Morrisons has lost its appeal following a breach at the company which resulted in thousands of its employees' details being posted online. The case is the first data leak group action in the UK.

In December 2017, in a landmark ruling, the High Court found Morrisons supermarket group liable for a mass data breach caused by the criminal actions of a rogue employee. However, Morrisons went on to challenge this decision.

The employee stole data from nearly 100,000 staff. This included names, addresses, salary and bank details. The information was then posted online and sent to newspapers. The media did not publish the data and Morrisons was informed of the breach. The employee was subsequently jailed for eight years.

The Court of Appeal upheld the original decision against the supermarket with three judges saying they agreed with the High Court's earlier decision.

Where Next

Over the last 18 months, we have seen numerous examples of significant personal data loss. Many of these violations have been able to occur due to weaknesses contained in companies' IT software.

As the trend towards a cashless society accelerates, this will only continue as retailers and other businesses seek quicker and slicker interfaces with their consumers. Both at the point of sale and throughout their customer journey.

In the case of Morrisons, significant steps were taken to protect data, but those steps failed. In this instance, the data was lost at the hands of an employee turned hacker. However, data is also at threat simply due to careless employees going about their day-to-day business.

Data breaches on a large scale are a real and pressing threat. In response, the clear and overwhelming view of the Court of Appeal is that such events must be foreseen by companies, and insured against.

The reaction of the insurers to such events, their provision of cyber cover and premium costs is now under the spotlight. Indeed, we predict a situation where the volume of exclusions to policies will increase.

Companies must now protect themselves better from data loss. But they also need to be extremely vigilant as to the activities and errors of their employees to be afforded the cover they pay for, or think they pay for.

If you have been affected by this or any other data breach then you can get in touch with our experts today