NDPC penalizes seven banks, other institutions over data privacy violations
By Felicia Nwosu
To deter more offenders from further violating data privacy of Nigerians through the Data Protection Act signed into law by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, seven banks and other institutions have been penalized to the sum of N200 million for violating the data privacy law.
This was revealed by Dr. Vincent Olatunji, the National Commissioner of Data Protection Commission (NDPC), while expressing worry over the surge in data breaches over the years. He stated that the new law seeks to make available a legal framework to regulate personal information in the country.
The data protection Ombudsman explained that this was government way of responding to install sanity in the management of individual’s data, while pointing out that the penalties came after the institutions which include a private university and some insurance companies, were found culpable for several privacy infractions after a series of investigations were conducted by the commission in a space of a year.
The NDPC boss who agreed that such violation has become a worrisome challenge, confirmed that seven banks were held responsible and made to pay the fines, the National Commissioner, however, did not reveal the identities of the erring financial institutions.
Elaborating further, he reiterated that the new law aims to create a more robust framework around protecting personal information and making them more private so hackers and other unscrupulous elements do not get access to personal data.
“Due to privacy breaches, some customers have been affected and have either lost cash or their personal identity to hackers.”
Recalling with disappointment some of the past sad incidents where customers could not access their funds in the banks because their personal data were wrongly captured during onboarding. To ensure an all-round sanity across all boards, Chief Executive Officers of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) have also been warned that they would be held responsible and will be prosecuted if any such data privacy breach is traced to their institutions.
“Customers failed to access their funds because the banks could not effectively secure their data thus allowing them to be exposed to hackers who took advantage of the breaches to steal their funds.”
He confirmed that within the past year, over 100 private sector institutions have been in their investigative net for various degrees of data privacy violations.
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