Zurich UK Data Breach: Are large fines good for Information Security?
Yesterday (24th Aug 10), one of the largest fines for a data breach in the UK was issued, with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) announcing a £2,750,000 fine of the UK arm of Zurich Insurance (Zurich UK). Some 46,000 Zurich policyholders had their unprotected personal data, which included bank account and credit card information, “go missing” during a routine data transfer to a South African data centre in August 2008, with Zurich only noticing the breach a year later. By the way Zurich were actually fined £3.25m but were given a 30% discount for settling the fine early, see the FSA press release for more details - http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pages/Library/Communication/PR/2010/134.shtml But do large fines actually work and help businesses, and indeed industries to become more Information Security savvy, and help enforce businesses to operate with better information security practices? Well I think the answer is a clear and resounding YES. And even more so when data breaches and...