Breaches of data protection recorded by Scottish Government: FOI release

Information requested

1. A yearly (2018/2019/2020/2021) breakdown of the number of data protection breaches under GDPR recorded by the Scottish Government since April 1, 2018.

2. A yearly breakdown of the number of data protection breaches under GDPR reported to the Information Commissioner's Office by the Scottish Government since April 1, 2018.

3. For each year, please provide the number of data protection breaches which took longer than 72 hours to be reported to the ICO.

4. Please also provide a yearly breakdown of the number of each type of data protection breach, described as a ‘Confidentiality breach’ – where there is an unauthorised or accidental disclosure of, or access to, personal data; an ‘Availability breach’ – where there is an accidental or unauthorised loss of access to, or destruction of, personal data, which could be permanent or temporary; or an ‘Integrity breach’ – where there is an unauthorised or accidental alteration of personal data. as described by the Law Society of Scotland.

Response

Year	Incidents or breaches logged	Breaches reported to ICO	>72 hours
2018/19	57	4	0
2019/20	106	5	0
2020/21	115	2	1

All were assessed as Confidentiality incidents.

You also requested the same information from Social Security Scotland and their response is as follows:

1. Please see below figures for breaches per calendar year. Its worth noting that GDPR was not applicable until 25th May 2018, and in addition, the Social Security Scotland (Agency) did not come into effect until September 2018. The figures are reflective of this.
2018 – 5 breaches
2019 – 26 breaches
2020 - 26 Breaches
2021 – 13 breaches

2. There have been no referrals to the ICO from Social Security Scotland.

3. As above there have been no referrals to the ICO.

4. The terminology here is an information security model and not used in GDPR. We do not categorise personal data breaches in this way. Therefore I give notice under s17 of FOISA 2002 that the information requested is not held.

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