PSNI Senior Officers To Face Tough Questions Over Data Breaches

Senior Officers from the PSNI are to face tough questions, amid two serious breaches of data regarding officers and members of staff.

The huge data breach led to personal details of serving PSNI officers and staff being mistakenly published online for a few hours on Tuesday this week. The PSNI have launched an investigation into this breach, apologising to its staff, citing human error as the cause.

This happened after the PSNI had responded to a Freedom of Information request, seeking the number of staff and officers of all ranks and grades in the organisation.

A published response saw a table embedded including rank and grade data, detailed information including surnames, initials, location, and department of PSNI staff. This data was visible to the public for almost two and a half hours. 

Assistant Chief Constable Chris Todd has apologised to staff, having notified them of this data breach, adding that it is being treated as a critical incident. 

A police board meeting, who are the oversight body for the PSNI, will seek further information. This meeting was arranged, before details of a second data breach, which saw several documents being stolen, had emerged.

It has been reported that a police-issue laptop, radio, and documents, which include a spreadsheet containing the names of more than 200 officers and staff, were stolen from a vehicle in Antrim over a month ago.

The Police Federation for Northern Ireland has said that this has made matters worse for the PSNI.

It has also been reported that Chief Constable Simon Byrne had cut short a family holiday to return to Belfast, to face some tough questions from politicians regarding these data breaches at this emergency meeting this morning, with the PSNI facing increasing pressure to produce credible explanations regarding data security procedures.