British Airways Fined
British Airways has been fined a total of ?183m by the UK?s ICO (Information Commissioner?s Office), the airline was fined because of the data breach that it had suffered during 2018. This penalty effects British Airways reputation as a leading airline and also demonstrates their lack of security regarding private data that their customers entrust them with.
Additionally, 2018 was the year that the new Data regulations, known as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), came into place after almost 20 years of a very lenient set of laws. These tougher laws mean that penalties can be increased much higher than the previous cap, detailed below, which Facebook had been dealt during their data breach with Cambridge Analytica during the same year.
British Airways was amongst these large organisations that naturally has to store lots of personal data each and every day, this of course makes it a major target for hackers who aim to disrupt not just businesses but also the industry that they are a part of, this ensures that maximum damage occurs and that a company cannot operate as originally intended.
Furthermore, the attack on British airways, which occurred early in September 2018, saw numerous amounts of transaction data leaked and stolen by unauthorised individuals, however the company insists that no personal or travel related data was leaked, this therefore reduced their fines and then caused the overall impact on the company?s reputation to dissipate.
However, on the 8th of July 2019 British Airways were ordered by the ICO (Information Commissioner?s Office) to pay a fine totalling ?183 Million, this accounts for just 4% of British Airways annual global turnover, this is only possible due to the new GDPR regulations which allow the maximum fine threshold to be raised from the previous ?500K maximum to ?20 Million or, as stated above, 4% of the global annual revenue of the company in question, whichever is a higher amount.
Finally, the amount that British Airways was fined is a stand out case, mainly due to the fact that it sets a new record for a recorded fine that relates to a data breach, unlike the similar Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 which had only received a maximum fine, at the time, of only ?500,000, a mere 367 times less that of the BA fine, which is technically only 1.4% of BA?s annual turnover not the 4% maximum, this would have resulted in a fine just shy of ?500,000,000.