Psychological Injury, Cyber Crime and Data Breach Damages

Data breaches concerning individuals and organisations are increasingly common despite the growing emphasis on GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and organisational security measures. Despite best intentions and quality control of data, sensitive data can have a variety of negative consequences. When a data breach occurs in an organisation, whether public or private, one compromising episode can adversely affect the best of reputations. Such damage to reputation and brand value as a result of a cyber security breach is an increasingly common occurrence. The digital world of immediate accessibility can result in a company’s identity being adversely affected throughout its customer base, and result in a significant loss of customer trust, whether the ‘customer’ be an individual or another corporate entity. The resulting shut down in operations in order to rectify the data breach very easily results in significant loss of revenue. In the UK, between 40-45% of all businesses identified at least one cyber breach in the past 12 months – it is clearly a priority for companies to learn how to keep data secure or face the consequences, one of which could be litigation.