New Skills Academy, an online education provider with over 800,000 students, has recently fallen foul of a significant data breach, raising serious concerns over the organisation’s compliance.

This incident follows a number of high-profile organisations in the UK that are simply failing to comply with data protection laws. On 6th July it was announced that British Airways had settled a civil action brought following a breach of its security systems in 2018 that caused the personal data of 420,000 staff and customers to be leaked. The same breach resulted in a regulatory fine of £20m from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

On 30th June 2021, New Skills Academy emailed users of its services to inform them that it had been targeted by a third party looking to acquire its users’ data. It said that its investigation revealed that “some customer account information may have been exposed to unauthorised sources”, but did…