ASSURED Training useful vocabulary

The Article 4 of the GDPR outlines that a Data Breach occurs where ‘there has been the accidental or unlawful destruction, loss, alteration, unauthorised disclosure of, or access to, personal data transmitted, stored or otherwise processed’. 

A Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) is a formal process used to identify, assess, and minimise the privacy risks associated with data processing activities. Under the GDPR, a DPIA is legally mandatory before starting any new research or project that is likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of individuals (such as large-scale monitoring or processing sensitive health data).

A Data Subject is the observation about whom the data relates. 

Usually a Data Subject is a natural person, but in the context of ASSURED, we expand this definition to refer to an observation that is represented by a single row in microdata. Under this definition, a Data Subject could also be a commercial entity, a group of people such as a family, a sensitive habitat, etc. 

To ensure the clarity and readability of the text, we tend to refer to the Data Subject as if they were a natural person (i.e. referring to Data Subjects as 'they') but it should be understood that the principles expressed also apply to other types of Data Subjects.   

This is the idea that one observation could account for most of the value in a statistical measure, and therefore be identifiable. It can sometimes apply to individuals,but is more of a concern for business statistics where firms might dominate a market or sector, or might be making large investments in a particular year.

Source: SDC Handbook 2019, V1: https://securedatagroup.org/guides-and-resources/sdc-handbook/