British Airways Faces Record $230 million Fine Over Data Theft

[Pavel + 384]

British Airways-owner IAG is facing a record $230 million fine for the theft of data from 500,000 customers from its website last year under tough new data-protection rules policed by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO proposed a penalty of 183.4 million pounds, or 1.5% of British Airways’ 2017 worldwide turnover, for the hack, which it said exposed poor security arrangements at the airline. BA indicated that it planned to appeal against the fine, the product of European data protection rules, called GDPR, that came into force in 2018. They allow regulators to fine companies up to 4% of their global turnover for data-protection failures. The attack involved traffic to the British Airways website being diverted to a fraudulent site, where customer details such as log in, payment card and travel booking details as well as names and addresses were harvested, the ICO said. “When an organization fails to protect it from loss, damage or theft it is more than an inconvenience. That’s why the law is clear – when you are entrusted with personal data you must look after it.” - said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. 

[pinto + 293]

Nice. People’s personal data is just that – personal!

[damirUSBiH + 327]

The point of the law is to give businesses incentive to proactively put security in place, and this "financial measure" could help.

[50 shades of black + 254]

I agree with fighting against cheaters, and hackers. As a company you have responsibility to protect your customers. Period!

[joze44 + 39]

That would be a record hacking fine and dwarfs the 500,000 pound maximum paid by Facebook. One word: regulation.

[francoba + 93]

First of all I'm glad this is happening. I read all the article. In one sentence they said: : "We have found no evidence of fraud/fraudulent activity on accounts linked to the theft.”

So they are saying that no money has been stolen YET from the thousands of credit cards stolen?   

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

12 hours ago, Pavel said:

British Airways-owner IAG is facing a record $230 million fine for the theft of data from 500,000 customers from its website last year under tough new data-protection rules policed by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO proposed a penalty of 183.4 million pounds, or 1.5% of British Airways’ 2017 worldwide turnover, for the hack, which it said exposed poor security arrangements at the airline. BA indicated that it planned to appeal against the fine, the product of European data protection rules, called GDPR, that came into force in 2018. They allow regulators to fine companies up to 4% of their global turnover for data-protection failures. The attack involved traffic to the British Airways website being diverted to a fraudulent site, where customer details such as log in, payment card and travel booking details as well as names and addresses were harvested, the ICO said. “When an organization fails to protect it from loss, damage or theft it is more than an inconvenience. That’s why the law is clear – when you are entrusted with personal data you must look after it.” - said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. 

I didn't read the article, but based on this quote I'm wondering about the part in bold. If the customers were redirected to a different site, how did that happen? I'm thinking the DNS entry was either hacked or suborned. Generally, DNS is the province of the internet provider.  I'm assuming IAG isn't in the ISP business. Therefore they should have a good case. Now however, if the IT dept was ignoring emails from the domain name registration authority or something similar, it's on them. 

Edited July 9, 2019 by Ward Smith
Stupid auto-correct

[ronwagn + 6,290]

14 hours ago, Pavel said:

British Airways-owner IAG is facing a record $230 million fine for the theft of data from 500,000 customers from its website last year under tough new data-protection rules policed by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO proposed a penalty of 183.4 million pounds, or 1.5% of British Airways’ 2017 worldwide turnover, for the hack, which it said exposed poor security arrangements at the airline. BA indicated that it planned to appeal against the fine, the product of European data protection rules, called GDPR, that came into force in 2018. They allow regulators to fine companies up to 4% of their global turnover for data-protection failures. The attack involved traffic to the British Airways website being diverted to a fraudulent site, where customer details such as log in, payment card and travel booking details as well as names and addresses were harvested, the ICO said. “When an organization fails to protect it from loss, damage or theft it is more than an inconvenience. That’s why the law is clear – when you are entrusted with personal data you must look after it.” - said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. 

It is too bad that American citizens can't get nice checks for all the data that our government has stolen from us. It continues to do so in full force.