In 2016, telecommunications company TalkTalk was fined £400,000 for failing to prevent a cyber attacker from accessing customer data. Should this happen after 25th May 2018 the company would be fined £74m under the new General Data Protection Regulation, resulting in a consequential 18,000% increase.
All businesses operating in the EU must ramp up their GDPR efforts otherwise they could see themselves facing hefty fines. As companies collect and store more data there is an inherent risk of it being used for felonious activity.
Tough data protection regulations are ‘designed to harmonise’ data laws across the European Union to help protect EU citizens’ privacy. The new laws will reshape how organisations operate. Companies trading in the EU such as Apple could have €756 million wiped out in one go thanks to a substantial 4% fine.