It has been reported that Independent News and Media (INM) is trying to stall a case that is being taken against it and its former chairman, Leslie Buckley, by two members of the so-called INM-19 cohort whose personal data was allegedly hacked at the newspaper publisher. Former INM executives, Karl Brophy and Gavin O’Reilly, who are suing the company and Mr Buckley, are trying to force the company to file a defence to their legal claim over the alleged breach of their data. The two businessmen, who left INM and later set up PR company Red Flag, have sought judgment against INM for not filing its defence in time. Mr Buckley filed his defence in the case last July.
<p>This is a really interesting case for all businesses to pay attention to as it highlights the risk, cost and business impact of not investing in a robust privacy program. The business impact is the financial cost associated with legal fees, potential privacy regulatory fines if found not adhering to GDPR compliance requirements, and employee compensation if found that the privacy of their data was not adhered to both from a business collection purpose, and/or if adequate protection controls where not in place which can result in their data being breached. Again Executive management need to understand that Trust and Security is a business differentiator. Not having an adequate privacy program with dedicated privacy operations will slow businesses down in fulfilling data discovery requirements for privacy, such as the subject access requests and general eDiscovery that protects organizations in legal cases like this. We are likely to see more of these cases arise in the future.</p>