Data Protection Act Compliance The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), a United Kingdom Act of Parliament, regulates how personal data is obtained, protected, used and disclosed. The Act requires any person or organization holding personal information about living and identifiable individuals to comply with the eight data protection principles, and to notify The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) about their process. DPA Data Protection Principles The Act requires personal data to be: stored securely to ensure data is not lost, disposed of or misused; securely encrypted, where data stored on a laptop or other portable device could be used to cause an individual damage or distress, especially with financial or medical records. In addition to technical security, organisations must have policies on the appropriate use and security of portable devices and ensure their staffs are properly trained in these.

www.dataprotection.gov.uk One in five small & medium businesses have breached the Data Protection Act (DPA) at least once, according to a survey by The British Standards Institution (BSI).

DPA Enforement and Penalties

Remedies for misuse of personal data include compensation if the individual has suffered damage, rectification or destruction of inaccurate data, and the right to request a review by the Commissioner of whether the Act has been contravened.

How RDB Helps You Comply

Remote Data Backups' secure, automatic offsite backups ensure confidential personal data is securely transferred and stored safely offsite.

• Secure Data Storage

  Remote Data Backups' data centers feature the tightest physical and technical safeguards to prevent unauthorized access to our mirrored data centers. Both are hardened facilities with limited administrative access, finger scanners for physical access and motion detectors and camera tracking.
  
  Using RDB helps reduce your Security "Media Control" risks by eliminating insecure methods of data handling that result from traditional disk or tape backup techniques.
  
  

• Secure Data Encryption & Transfer

  Your data is encrypted before it leaves your computer, in transit and in storage at our data centers using bank and government-level 128-bit AES encryption with a personalized encryption key that you choose during setup.
  
  Transmissions also use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) authentication to prevent packet sniffing along with strict access controls, auditing mechanisms, and event reporting.
  
  Our system is specifically designed to protect laptop data, with settings to trigger automatic backups even while not consistently connected to a network.
  
  

• Written Data Security Policies

  Data Protection Act Laws require providers to have a written policies in place for responding to system emergencies. A data backup plan is required as part of the contingency plan, which we can provide at no additional charge.
  
  The plan ensures secure, reliable automatic back-up and easy, readily-available data restore in the event you have a system failure or other form of data loss.

Everyone needs to back up their important data, and RDB eliminates insecure methods that lead to a breach (unencrypted laptops, lost USB drives, disks and other portable media, etc.) and ICO citations that can include fines, restitution and criminal prosecution.