Gwent Police rapped for data protection blunder

Gwent Police has been criticised by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for accidentally emailing thousands of personal records to a journalist.

The data watchdog has found the force in breach of the Data Protection Act, and has requested that it sign an undertaking to ensure that the same thing does not happen again.

Gwent Police sent a spreadsheet containing records relating to 10,000 individuals to the wrong person when a staff member clicked his address by mistake.

Embarrassing though such leaks are, the impact of the mistake was further compounded by the fact that the recipient was a journalist.

Although much of the data was unidentifiable, the ICO said that 863 records contained some personal information.

Gwent Police carried out its own investigation, and has disciplined the staff member for failing to follow IT security processes regarding the importance of password protection and only sharing information that is absolutely necessary.

"It is essential that staff are aware of and follow their organisation's security policies," said Anne Jones, assistant ICO commissioner for Wales, in a statement.

"Such a huge amount of sensitive personal information should never have been circulated via email, especially when there was no password or encryption in place. We are pleased that Gwent Police has taken steps to prevent this happening again."

The incident occurred in August last year, but the ICO waited to publish its findings while the force carried out its own investigation.