data breach penalties – Cyber Law Watch

Australia passes Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022

Dec 02 2022

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Stephanie Mayhew

Earlier this week (on 29 November), the Australian Parliament passed the Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 (Bill) which was introduced to Parliament on 26 October 2022.

The Bill amends the following:

Privacy Act 1988 to expand the Australian Information Commissioner’s enforcement and information sharing powers and increase penalties for serious or repeated interferences with privacy;

Australian Communications and Media Authority Act 2005 to enable the Australian Communications and Media Authority to disclose information to a non-corporate Commonwealth entity that is responsible for enforcing one or more laws of the Commonwealth; and

Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010 to allow the Australian Information Commissioner to delegate certain functions or powers.

Sep 29 2022

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Stephanie Mayhew

Over the past two years, the Privacy Act has been the subject of long-awaited reform in Australia however, it seems the Optus data breach may have given it some much needed momentum.

The Optus attack is understood to have affected the details of 11.2m Optus customers, and of that 2.8m individuals have had their driver’s licence and/or passport numbers compromised. The hacker claims to have extracted the data from an API – software that allows two different systems to talk to each other. Therefore, if the claim is true the hacker didn’t need to provide authentication (e.g. a username and password) to retrieve the data.

In the wake of the attack, the Government has shared its plans to pursue substantial reforms that will include increased penalties under the Privacy Act (currently capped at $2.22m per offence) as well as changes to data breach notification laws to allow companies to rapidly inform financial institutions of affected individuals in an effort to minimise fraud.

The data breach also highlights the risks involved in collecting large amounts of personal information and storing this for excessive time periods. While the Privacy Act promotes the collection of a minimum amount of personal information, i.e. only that information that is necessary for a particular purpose and which the entity intends to use or disclose – individuals generally have limited control over how long their information is retained for.

During the initial stages of the Privacy Act review, the Attorney General’s Department sought submissions from entities on their views as to whether individuals should be given the right to have their personal information erased. Optus in submissions to the review argued against such a change stating that the right to erase personal data would involve significant technical hurdles and compliance costs that would outweigh the benefits. Of course this incident has happened just as stores are gearing up for Halloween – a fitting time for those public submissions to come back to haunt them.

ICO issues record £20 million fine to British Airways

Oct 19 2020

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Gill

The UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined British Airways £20 million, the ICO’s largest fine to date, for failing to protect the personal and financial details of more than 400,000 of its customers.

In a statement published online on 16 October 2020, the ICO stated that its investigation had found that British Airways was “processing a significant amount of personal data without adequate security measures in place”. This failure is said to have breached data protection laws and, subsequently, the airline was the subject of a cyberattack in 2018, which was not detected for more than two months.

Jun 01 2020

By Cameron Abbott, Warwick Andersen, Rob Pulham, Michelle Aggromito and Rebecca Gill

It has been reported that hackers have accessed and stolen details of about 9 million customers of British airline easyJet. Approximately 2,208 easyJet customers have also had their credit card details accessed and stolen.

easyJet reported that it became aware of this “highly sophisticated” cyberattack in late January this year. After an investigation, the airline recently disclosed that the details accessed and stolen by the hackers included email addresses, travel information, and credit card data including CVV numbers.

Mar 11 2020

By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Rebecca Gill

In a first for Australia, the Australian Information Commissioner (Commissioner) has launched proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia, seeking penalties against Facebook for serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy. The contraventions relate to the conduct disclosed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved the This is Your Digital Life app (App). We’ve previously blogged about the App here.

It is unclear how the penalties will be calculated in this proceeding. The penalty rate applicable to the relevant period (being from March 2014 to May 2015) is a maximum of $1.7 million. Some have suggested that fines may be in the billions if the maximum rate is applied to each individual affected as a single “contravention” (with possibly over 300,000 contraventions in total!). This may be fun to calculate, but highly unlikely to be applied in reality.

Canada proposes to increase penalties for tech giants in its Digital Charter

May 27 2019

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Gill

The Canadian federal government has proposed to introduce a combination of fines for companies that violate privacy laws, in order to rein in the growing power of Silicon Valley tech giants.

Canada’s Innovation Minister recently announced a 10-point Digital Charter that aims to provide more transparency into how companies collect and use personal information and stronger rights for consumers to consent to the use of their data. Key principles of the Charter include giving Canadians control over their data, promoting ethical use of data, ensuring that the online marketplace is competitive to facilitate growth of Canadian businesses, and implementing “meaningful penalties” for violations of privacy laws.

Facebook’s Potential $70 billion Legal Challenge

Apr 13 2018

By Rob Pulham, Warwick Andersen and Georgia Mills

In another blow to embattled Facebook, British and US lawyers have launched a class action lawsuit against the social media giant, along with Cambridge Analytica and two other companies for allegedly misusing the data of over 87 million people.

Data breach penalties could cost U.K. companies £122B in 2018

Oct 18 2016

By Cameron Abbott and Rebecca Murray

U.K. businesses could face up to £122 billion in penalties for data breaches when EU legislation comes into effect in 2018, according the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will introduce fines for groups of companies of to €20 million or 4% of annual worldwide turnover, significantly higher than the current maximum of £500,000. This means that if data breaches remain at 2015 levels, the fines paid to the European regulator could see a near 90-fold increase, from £1.4 billion in 2015 to £122 billion, the PCI SSC calculated. For large U.K. organisations, this could see regulatory fines for data breaches soar to £70 billion, more than a 130-fold increase, rising to an average of £11 million per organisation. Regulatory fines for SMEs could see a 57-fold increase, rising to £52 billion, averaging £13,000 per SME. Read more at ComputerWeekly.com by clicking here.

Tag:data breach penalties

Australia passes Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022

Privacy and cybersecurity laws expected to undergo a significant overhaul in the wake of Optus data breach

This is your digital life (of no consent or control): The Australian Information Commissioner takes Facebook to Court

Canada proposes to increase penalties for tech giants in its Digital Charter

Facebook’s Potential $70 billion Legal Challenge