Stay informed on the latest in information security trends, breaches, and best practices with our expertly curated content on cyber safety.
Search across headline titles and summaries.
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.
Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta was slapped with the fine for exposing the personal data of minors.
Bike and car accessory slinger fined £30,000 for hitting send on more than 499k unsolicited emails Bike and car accessory retailer Halfords has found itself in the wrong lane with Britain’s data watchdog for sending hundreds of thousands of unsolicited marketing emails to members of the public.…
Retailer sent half a million emails to people without their consent
Instagram allowed children to run business accounts, which showed phone numbers and email addresses