Sympl fixes potential GDPR compliance issue in Symbiosis

A bug in the Symbiosis hosting management platform means that by default, the IP addresses of some website visitors are publicly accessible. This is potentially sensitive information, and critically, as IP addresses are considered ‘personal data’ under GDPR, this means that the default configuration of Symbiosis is not GDPR-compliant.

This bug is due to incorrect handling of the automatic web statistic generation flag in Symbiosis, which results in full statistics being enabled by default on all sites even if no access restrictions are in place. Existing statistics will persist even when statistics are disabled.

This issue has been addressed in Sympl, where web statistics are disabled by default, and a password must be set to access them via a browser. While this is one of the most serious of the security issues from Symbiosis which have been fixed in Sympl, it is unfortunately not the only one.

For an immediate fix, we recommend users migrate to Sympl. This can be done by provisioning a new server running Debian Stretch or Debian Buster, and installing Sympl then migrating their content across to the new server.

GDPR compliance is a serious issue, with the potential for very substantial fines (up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million – whichever is greater), and recent cases have demonstrated that the ICO is prepared to impose such fines

For more information on what constitutes personal data under GDPR, please see the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

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