UK Police Suffered Thousands of Data Breaches in 2020 Phil Muncaster UK / EMEA News Reporter , Infosecurity Magazine VPNoverview requested information from the UK’s 45 police forces and received responses from 31. All told, the results revealed a national average of 299 data breaches per police station over the period dating from 2016 to the first four months of 2021. This included a combination of human error — for example, staff emailing sensitive information to the wrong recipient — and malicious third-party attacks. There was no breakdown in the report indicating which accounted for the majority of cases. However, separate FoI data from 23 forces obtained in 2019 revealed that 237 officers and staff members were disciplined, six resigned during investigations and 11 were sacked for computer misuse offenses over the previous two years.