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Background for this topic.
A fine is a monetary penalty imposed by a competent authority or court for violating a law, regulation, or legally binding requirement. In information security and privacy, it may follow inadequate safeguards for personal data, unlawful processing, failure to meet required reporting or record-keeping duties, or non-compliance with sector-specific controls. The legal basis, maximum amount, and factors such as severity, duration, negligence, cooperation, and remediation vary by jurisdiction; a fine is generally punitive rather than compensation for affected parties.
For security practitioners, a fine signals that controls and security decisions may be examined as evidence of compliance. Maintain documented risk assessments, access reviews, patching decisions, supplier oversight, logging, and retention practices, especially where they protect regulated data. During an incident, preserve relevant records and establish an accurate timeline for containment, notification, and remediation. Privacy requirements such as data minimization and retention limits can therefore be security controls as well as legal obligations. A fine does not by itself establish that a particular attack or breach occurred.
Weekly headline count for the current query.
'Attackers can now cheaply operationalize known vulnerabilities at scale,' boffins tell The Reg
Proposed legislation threatens fines and prison for reckless damage. Russian Prez must be shaking in his boots
Social media biz says watchdog's fine formula is 'disproportionate' and should stop counting global revenue
He would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for a meddling security team's fear of USB On Call Each Friday The Register offers a fresh installment of On Call, the reader-contributed column that celebrates the fine art of tech support.…
Blue-on-blue internal investigation lands force £66k fine The UK's data protection watchdog has fined Police Scotland £66,000 ($88,000) for what it calls a "serious failure" in handling an alleged victim's sensitive data.…
Social media giant retorts it doesn't want to collect 'private' data, and plans to appeal The UK's data protection regulator has fined social media giant Reddit £14.47 million ($19.5 million) over its use of children's data.…
Appeals judge says yes in latest battle of ICO against a breached retail giant The UK's data protection watchdog has scored a small win in a lengthy legal battle against a British retail group that lost millions of data records during a 2017 breach.…
Regulators logged over 400 personal data breach notifications a day for first time since law came into force GDPR fines pushed past the £1 billion (€1.2 billion) mark in 2025 as Europe's regulators were deluged with more than 400 data breach notifications a day, according to a new survey that suggests the post-plateau era of enforcement has well and truly arrived.…
OG CDN boss says fighting illegal streams is about stopping criminals cashing in, not free speech Interview After Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince recently threatened to disrupt the Winter Olympics to protect free speech after Italian authorities fined his company for not disrupting pirate video streams, rival CDN provider Akamai’s CEO Dr. Tom Leighton fired back with what reads a lot like thinly veiled criticism.…
Cold milk poured over 'spicy mode,' but it might not be enough to escape a huge fine Ofcom is continuing with its investigation into X, despite the social media platform saying it will block Grok from digitally undressing people.…
Three major GDPR violations, including a lack of basic security controls, lead to hefty dent in profits The French data protection regulator, CNIL, today issued a collective €42 million ($48.9 million) fine to two French telecom companies for GDPR violations stemming from a data breach.…
UK data regulator says failures were unacceptable for a company managing the world's passwords The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) says LastPass must cough up £1.2 million ($1.6 million) after its two-part 2022 data breach compromised information from up to 1.6 million UK users.…
Strongly-worded emails to staff telling them to be more careful aren't going to cut it anymore Partner Content UK GDPR Article 32 mandates "appropriate security measures". The ICO has defined what that means: multi-million-pound fines for password failures. The violations that trigger them? Small, familiar, and happening in your organization right now.…
ICO fined Bharat Singh Chand £200,000 after receiving 19,138 complaints Britain's data watchdog has fined a sole trader £200,000 for nearly a million spam texts targeting people in debt – almost 20 pence per message.…
Noyb says New York-based facial recognition biz flouted GDPR orders and kept scraping anyway Privacy advocates at Noyb filed a criminal complaint against Clearview AI for scraping social media users' faces without consent to train its AI algorithms.…
Nations previously exempt from scraping now in the firing line If you thought living in Europe, Canada, or Hong Kong meant you were protected from having LinkedIn scrape your posts to train its AI, think again. You have a week to opt out before the Microsoft subsidiary assumes you're fine with it.…
ICO makes example of outsourcing giant over sluggish cyber response The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a £14 million ($18.6 million) penalty to outsourcing giant Capita following a catastrophic 2023 cyberattack that exposed the personal data of 6.6 million people.…
Regulator warns penalties will pile up until internet toilet does its paperwork Ofcom, the UK's Online Safety Act regulator, has fined online message board 4chan £20,000 ($26,680) for failing to protect children from harmful content.…
How recycled passwords and poor security habits are fueling a cybercrime gold rush Partner Content If you're still using "password123" for more than one account, there's a good chance you've already exposed yourself to credential stuffing attacks — one of the most prevalent and damaging forms of automated cybercrime today. Just ask the 6.9 million users of 23andMe who discovered their personal details were compromised when cybercriminals used recycled credentials from other breaches to infiltrate their accounts.…
ICO investigation into platform's lack of age assurance continues The UK's data watchdog has described Imgur's move to block UK users as "a commercial decision" after signaling plans to fine parent company MediaLab.…