Cybersecurity month: importance of protection and legal representation

This October marks the 8^th year of the European Cybersecurity Month (ECSM), and it is an important thing to mark as a leading firm of data breach compensation lawyers.

Starting in 2012, the event brings together parties across Europe to unite against cyber threats and dangers. It is important to know how to protect yourself online against cyber criminals and hackers, and it is also important to know where to turn to in the event that you have been the victim of a breach.

The importance of cybersecurity month

With so much of our world becoming increasingly reliant on online data and accounts, the risks involved with information storage and processing have increased. Cybersecurity month raises awareness around such risks and prepares people for potential cyber-attacks and scams.

The official theme of this year’s cybersecurity month is ‘Think Before U Click, #ThinkB4UClick’. The programme being offered focuses on two specific themes to help people identify cyber threats. The first theme, ‘Digital Skills’, provides participants with information on e-privacy matters such as personal data protection, cyber bullying and cyber stalking. The second theme, ‘Cyber Scams’, shares insights into current and potential cyber threats such as phishing, business email compromise and online shopping fraud.

There are many workshops and activities available surrounding those two topic areas available on the ECSM website.

By being aware of potential cyber-attacks and knowing how to protect yourself online, the risk of fraud and criminal activity could be reduced if your personal data is ever leaked or exposed.

How to protect your details online

Cybersecurity month highlights the importance of protecting yourself online. Here are four quick and simple top tips on how you can achieve this:

• Use a credit card over a debit card – when purchasing something online, credit cards usually offer better consumer protection against fraud.
• Consistently check your bank statements for any fraudulent activity and report issues to your bank as soon as you spot anything suspicious.
• Use strong passwords for every online account – make sure to include a combination of numbers, special characters and both upper- and lower-case letters. Also, use a different password for each account.
• Make sure you are only entering personal information into secured websites – if a website has a padlock in front of the web address, it should be a secure page.

These are all good measures to adopt for cybersecurity but, sometimes, the safety of your data is taken out of your hands. There are many data leaks reported each year by companies or businesses who have left sensitive information accessible online, and that is where we come in.

The significance of what we do

As specialist, leading data breach compensation lawyers, we have years of experience representing people in large data breaches, and our expert lawyers know exactly how to help you get the compensation that you deserve.

Amongst others, we have been significantly involved in both the British Airways data breach scandal and the Virgin Media Data Breach scandal, helping thousands of victims claim compensation for the misuse and exposure of their personal data.

By order of the High Court of Justice, in October 2019, we were appointed to the Steering Committee of the BA Group Action – the first GDPR Group Litigation Order (GLO) in England and Wales; an action that could lead to an estimated total compensation bill of up to £3.5bn.

If you have been affected by a data breach, contact us today on 0800 643 7575 or visit our contact page here for ways to get in touch.

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