More than 14,000 data breaches have been logged in the UK during the first year under the GDPR and fines are approaching, the ICO has said.
Since its introduction on May 25 last year and the beginning of May 2019 the ICO said it have received a total of 14,072 data breach notifications, four times more than it logged from April 2017 to 2018.
The ICO has handed out fines to 29 companies in the last 12 months, or 0.25 per cent of breaches.
But an ICO spokeswoman has said that there are more to be issued once the necessary legal processes have been completed.
“However, we want organisations to focus on how data protection law can help them to get it right and enhance their reputations by earning people’s trust and confidence, rather than how they might be punished if they get it wrong,” she said.
“The introduction of GDPR was not a deadline but the start of an ongoing process and there is a lot more work to be done.
“That said, we will not hesitate to act in the public’s best interests when organisations wilfully or negligently break the law. The enforcement action we have planned during the coming months will demonstrate that.”
The UK is now one of the top three countries for data breaches in Europe since the introduction of GDPR.