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Well, the fine is only 20k€ because they were very cooperative, quick to fix the worst issues, and promised to continue improving their security further. Accord

Well, the fine is only 20k€ because they were very cooperative, quick to fix the worst issues, and promised to continue improving their security further. According to the Data Protection Officer's statement their total expenses were in the six figures. They also explicitly state that the fine wasn't higher as not to place a disproportionate burden on the company's finances, which probably means that they wouldn't have been able to afford a significantly higher fine. Contrary to the fear-mongering on this site, the purpose of GDPR isn't to fine companies out of existence.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Yes, I saw that elsewhere when I'd finished writing. More cooperative still would be doing the changes before you're caught. If you could skip your tax bill for a few years, but get a much smaller fine if you cooperated when caught then you'd be silly to actually pay. In short, in terms of pour encourage les autres this fails badly IMO.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > If you could skip your tax bill for a few years, but get a much smaller fine if you cooperated when caught then you'd be silly to actually pay. If you do the work ahead of time, you pay the cost of doing the work. If you wait for the fine, you pay the cost of doing the work plus the fine. It doesn't take a lot of fine to make doing the work to begin with worth it -- basically just accounting for chance of getting away with it and time value of money, which goes down as the government gets better at catching more people quicker, as should be their primary goal for something like this.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Maybe, but there's much more work that needs doing to secure PII than just not having plaintext passwords. So, they can seemingly avoid doing all that work too, and maintaining those systems (with staffing costs). And you get a leg-up over the competition who can't use the cash that they put in to security. That means those with poor security regimes may "win" because the costs of poor PII hygiene are externalised. It would certainly be nice to imagine all the 2 million UK corporations are addressing PII security rather than hiding and hoping not to get a fine ...
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > Maybe, but there's much more work that needs doing to secure PII than just not having plaintext passwords. So, they can seemingly avoid doing all that work too, and maintaining those systems (with staffing costs). If the regulators catch someone breaking a rule like this, the consequence should obviously involve an audit that looks for other violations and requires them to fix those too. But even if it didn't, your conclusion wouldn't follow, because they would still have no incentive to fix the other problems unless they expected to get caught for not fixing them. But if they did expect to get caught then the numerous predicted small fines would be a sufficient deterrent. > It would certainly be nice to imagine all the 2 million UK corporations are addressing PII security rather than hiding and hoping not to get a fine It's the hiding and hoping not to get a fine that's the reason large fines don't work. Higher penalties can't deter someone who doesn't expect to be caught. What works is smaller penalties with vigorous enforcement.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        Thanks for expounding your position, I still disagree however. The analysis is similar to a parking fine, if the fine is €1 but parking is €2 per hour then people will chance it. If the fine is having your car towed and €200 then people will be damned sure not to go even a minute over their paid time.
        AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        Parking fines aren't designed for deterrence, they're designed for revenue generation. If parking is €2 and the fine is €1 on top of the parking cost if you get caught (plus €5 worth of inconvenience doing fine paperwork), and there is a 90% chance of getting caught, nobody parks illegally -- and therefore there is no fine revenue. But if you make it a $200 fine with a one in a thousand chance of getting caught, then it's profitable, because then many people rationally take the risk and become a source of citation revenue. But the violation rate is higher, so if that was your goal, it fails -- unless you're still doing vigorous enforcement, in which case high fines are once again unnecessary.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

Yes, I saw that elsewhere when I'd finished writing. More cooperative still would be doing the changes before you're caught. If you could skip your tax bill for a few years, but get a much smaller fine if you cooperated when caught then you'd be silly to actually pay. In short, in terms of pour encourage les autres this fails badly IMO.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> If you could skip your tax bill for a few years, but get a much smaller fine if you cooperated when caught then you'd be silly to actually pay. If you do the work ahead of time, you pay the cost of doing the work. If you wait for the fine, you pay the cost of doing the work plus the fine. It doesn't take a lot of fine to make doing the work to begin with worth it -- basically just accounting for chance of getting away with it and time value of money, which goes down as the government gets better at catching more people quicker, as should be their primary goal for something like this.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Maybe, but there's much more work that needs doing to secure PII than just not having plaintext passwords. So, they can seemingly avoid doing all that work too, and maintaining those systems (with staffing costs). And you get a leg-up over the competition who can't use the cash that they put in to security. That means those with poor security regimes may "win" because the costs of poor PII hygiene are externalised. It would certainly be nice to imagine all the 2 million UK corporations are addressing PII security rather than hiding and hoping not to get a fine ...
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    > Maybe, but there's much more work that needs doing to secure PII than just not having plaintext passwords. So, they can seemingly avoid doing all that work too, and maintaining those systems (with staffing costs). If the regulators catch someone breaking a rule like this, the consequence should obviously involve an audit that looks for other violations and requires them to fix those too. But even if it didn't, your conclusion wouldn't follow, because they would still have no incentive to fix the other problems unless they expected to get caught for not fixing them. But if they did expect to get caught then the numerous predicted small fines would be a sufficient deterrent. > It would certainly be nice to imagine all the 2 million UK corporations are addressing PII security rather than hiding and hoping not to get a fine It's the hiding and hoping not to get a fine that's the reason large fines don't work. Higher penalties can't deter someone who doesn't expect to be caught. What works is smaller penalties with vigorous enforcement.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Thanks for expounding your position, I still disagree however. The analysis is similar to a parking fine, if the fine is €1 but parking is €2 per hour then people will chance it. If the fine is having your car towed and €200 then people will be damned sure not to go even a minute over their paid time.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        Parking fines aren't designed for deterrence, they're designed for revenue generation. If parking is €2 and the fine is €1 on top of the parking cost if you get caught (plus €5 worth of inconvenience doing fine paperwork), and there is a 90% chance of getting caught, nobody parks illegally -- and therefore there is no fine revenue. But if you make it a $200 fine with a one in a thousand chance of getting caught, then it's profitable, because then many people rationally take the risk and become a source of citation revenue. But the violation rate is higher, so if that was your goal, it fails -- unless you're still doing vigorous enforcement, in which case high fines are once again unnecessary.