Grid-Tools

Permanent overhaul of how non-production data is used

Posted on 22. Jul, 2010 by Huw Price in Test data

How did you greet the news that organisations will soon have to notify customers and regulators of any data breaches?

The EU passed its data breach notification rules last October and they will be rolled out to all member states in 2011. Chances are, many of us thought two things…
One – the rules only apply to telecoms service providers so that’s not a concern and two, the majority of major breaches so far have concerned misplaced laptops and other human (comedy of) errors.
But guess what. The EU has said that it is looking to extend the regulations to all organisations that process personal data, whether that be a supermarket or a bank and daft legislation is coming up soon…
And – non production systems used for in-house development, testing, and training purposes are generally open. So how long before they come under the same remit? After all, a copy is a copy and can be subject to any number of misuses or simple ‘human error’.

Needless to say, the proposed tightening up will mean stiff sanctions and significant fines for companies that fall foul of them.

So perhaps these moves will induce the birth of a new approach to how test data is generated. OK. Enough with the midwifery metaphors. It just seems that a permanent overhaul of how non production data is used is inevitable.

Tags: data breach, generate test data, test data, test data for non-production, test data generation