Personal data breach ( I think)

[Snuggleworm]

I am asking this for a work colleague. She was off work recently, mainly due to work stress and some personal issues.
To cut a long story short, she has found her file on a shared drive with all her personal information, doctors notes, HR emails etc. She brought it to the attention of our manager who deleted it immediately and brushed it off. However, she is understandably upset as the nature of her illness was not something that she wanted all staff to know about.She did keep screenshots of the file location.

She has been having a very hard time of late and to say management are not treating her very well is putting it lightly.
So what I want t know is, does she have a case against the company for the breach? As anyone could have read her file.

A case, as in a legal case? How exactly was she damaged by this omission, which was immediately corrected?

@MissConductUS she wants to know what the company are going to do as any employee could have known the reason for her illness and time off work. This was very personal information

If there is a hr department she could report it to them and also the governance department. How did she.manage to find the file.

She needs to raise it with HR

even If no harm was done, it needs to be reported as a data breach or near miss. If the manager hasn’t done it, your friend can. Shouldn’t be brushed under the carpet, there’s a learning point there.

The organisation I just left considers the non reporting of a data breach or near miss to be gross misconduct - this is after several serious incidents were “brushed under the carpet”. It was the only way they could get people to take it seriously!

Thanks guys, it has been reported now and there is an investigation going on.