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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.
A German court has charged a programmer investigating an IT problem with hacking and fined them €3,000 ($3,265) for what it deemed was unauthorized access to external computer systems and spying on data. [...]
Company Fined for Dropping Advertising Cookies Without ConsentThe French data regulator imposed a fine of 10 million euros on Yahoo after determining that the company's advertising cookie policy had violated the country's privacy regulations. Yahoo deposited more than 20 tracking cookies without giving consumers a chance to withdraw consent.
Spotting a plaintext password and using it in research without authorization deemed a crime A security researcher in Germany has been fined €3,000 ($3,300, £2,600) for finding and reporting an e-commerce database vulnerability that was exposing almost 700,000 customer records.…
Also: FBI Warning About Androxgh0st; eBay Pays a $3 Million Fine for CyberstalkingThis week, Microsoft expanded plans to store EU citizens' data locally, shipping-themed phishing spam is a threat, the British Library overcame a ransomware setback, the FBI warned of Androxgh0st malware, Remcos RAT targeted South Korea, and eBay was fined $3 million for a cyberstalking campaign.
4.7 Billion Euros in Total Known Fines Since Data Protection Law Took EffectIreland - home to the European headquarters of a throng of multinational tech companies - is responsible for the greatest amount of aggregate data protection fines - 2.9 billion euros - since the European Union General Data Protection Regulation went into effect.
ICO slaps penalties on two businesses that collectively made more than 3 million cold calls Another week and yet another couple of pesky cold callers face fines from the UK's data privacy watchdog for "bombarding" unsuspecting households with marketing messages about home improvements.…
Explore how an advanced exposure management solution saved a major retail industry client from ending up on the naughty step due to a misconfiguration in its cookie management policy. This wasn’t anything malicious, but with modern web environments being so complex, mistakes can happen, and non-compliance fines can be just an oversight away.Download the full case study here
The ICO has fined HelloFresh £140,000 for breaking privacy laws with a spam marketing campaign