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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.
Radioactive hazards and cyber failings ... what could possibly go wrong? The outfit that runs Britain's Sellafield nuclear waste processing and decommissioning site has been fined £332,500 ($440,000) by the nation's Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) for its shoddy cybersecurity practices between 2019 and 2023.…
Nonprofit Group Hit 3 Times in 3 Weeks in 2018, Affecting PHI of 85,000 PatientsFederal regulators have hit a California physician services organization with a $240,000 HIPAA civil penalty following an investigation into three ransomware attacks that occurred within a three-week span in early 2018, compromising the sensitive information of 85,000 patients.
Nuclear waste processing facility Sellafield has been fined £332,500 ($440k) by the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) for failing to adhere to cybersecurity standards and putting sensitive nuclear information at risk over four years, from 2019 to 2023. [...]
A UK court has fined Sellafield Ltd £332,500 for cybersecurity failings related to the running of the Sellafield nuclear facility
The ICO blamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland for procedural failings that exposed the personal data of 9843 personnel, putting police officers at risk
A 2023 Breach Exposed Personal Details of All PSNI Officers and StaffThe U.K. data regulator the Police Service for Northern Ireland 750,000 pounds following a 2023 data breach that exposed personal details of the entire workforce. The U.K. Information Commissioner's Office determined the breach occurred when police attempted to respond to two open records requests.
At least seven intrusions in five years? Yeah, those promises of improvement more than 'long overdue' T-Mobile US has agreed to fork out $31.5 million to improve its cybersecurity and pay a fine after a string of network intrusions affected millions of customers between 2021 and 2023.…
The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta €91 million ($101.56 million) as part of a probe into a security lapse in March 2019, when the company disclosed that it had mistakenly stored users' passwords in plaintext in its systems