PGP president slams Information Commissioner

Yesterday, the Information Commissioner slammed the UK’s CEOs for failing to protect the personal data of their employees and customers and called for them to take the issue more seriously.

Philip Dunkelberger, also president of the data protection and encryption company, said that many company chief executives fail to understand the issues around data security and do not have the level of knowledge required to respond to the Information Commissioner’s comments.

“A government figure has asked CEOs to make data protection a priority,” he said. “But, does a chief executive of a business even know what to do? The IT departments understand these issues, but they do not translate this well to the CEOs.”

The Information Commissioner, speaking at the launch of his annual report, said that the number of companies, government departments and public bodies that have breached data protection rules is "frankly horrifying".

He said that the privacy of personal information should be given more priority in company boardrooms across the UK.

However, Dunkelberger said: “Boardroom executives have other issues to deal with, not just the protection of data. It is a very complicated area.

It is not just about encryption, there are processes and people issues involved too. Data security will continue to be a big story for the next few years. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to solving this problem.”