The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) ordered British Airways, the country’s largest airline, to pay a fine of £ 138 million for last year’s leak of customer’s data.
According to the BBC, the amount of fine is the highest in the entire history of ICO, and the fine itself was made public for the first time in accordance with the new European legislation.The talk about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in the European Union last year. The document obliges companies to report data leaks to the information officer.
“The message is clear – if you don’t treat your customers’ data with the utmost care expect severe punishment when things go wrong. When you are entrusted with personal data, you must look after it. Those that don’t will face scrutiny from my office to check they have taken appropriate steps to protect fundamental privacy rights”, — information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said.
The maximum penalty for GDPR violation is 4% of the company’s annual income. In case of British Airways, the fine amounted to 1.5% of its annual income in 2017.
Until recently, the maximum amount of the fine for violation of the GDPR was 500 thousand pounds sterling – so much Facebook had to pay for the scandal with Cambridge Analytica.
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