According to a warning issued by the Information Commissioner's Office, cases of theft and loss of data from records of prominent organizations and institutions have, over the past 1 year, risen to a level which has been termed as "unacceptable" by authorities. ICO has revealed that NHS hospitals, which are responsible for holding private medical data of many patients, are among the top worst offenders.

In the 12 months gone by, as many as 434 different organizations have reported data security breaches, a significant increase from the 277 cases reported for last year. Also, over a period of 2 years, a whopping 25 million records of child benefit plans, which included sensitive private data such as names, addresses and bank account details have been reported missing, and in all, there have been 711 reports of security breaches.

Regretting the fact that for the aforementioned period, over 200 hospitals and 200 companies reported breaches of the Data Protection Act, authorities feel that majority of the firms and organizations do not take data protection seriously. Deputy Information Commissioner David Smith said, "The majority of organizations get data protection right, but regrettably a significant minority of management teams are failing to take data protection seriously enough. Unacceptable amounts of data are being stolen, lost in transit or mislaid by staff".

Starting next year, ICO has decided to handle such cases of companies breaking rules with regards to private data more strictly. A fine of over ?500,000 could be slapped on each offender.