Jenna Curran of our office recently attended the TRADATA (Training of lawyers on the European Union’s Data Protection Reform) Seminar at Law Society House, Belfast and was granted a Certificate in recognition of her participation.

The event was operated with the European Lawyers Foundation as coordinator and eight other European partners.

Topics covered included the impact of GDPR nine months after its inception, the potential impact of Brexit and GDPR Employment Practices.

The seminar also featured a section on Cyber Security awareness in a world where the amount of information we deal with is increasing exponentially. Practical tips on regularly changing passwords, not using the same passwords for multiple accounts and considering the use of strong passwords was a simple but effective reminder of how we can try to meet our responsibility to protect not only our own data, but that of others.

Cyber Crime is on the increase and the perpetrators of this type of crime have at their fingertips very sophisticated software packages which can allow them to infiltrate various devices and make use of that data for their own gain. Often, their gain comes at the expense of the person from whom the data has been taken. We are all too familiar with the cases of hackers intercepting emails containing bank account details and changing these details. This can, of course, have huge ramifications for the person who ultimately ends up transferring money to a non-intended beneficiary.

The training served as a sobering reminder that information and personal data are very valuable and it is imperative that we treat that data with the level of respect it deserves. To ignore doing so has potentially devastating consequences.