Companies Must Improve Online Security or Face Massive Fines

How safe do you think your data online is?

We practically hear a story every week about how some major company has had it’s online data compromised. Based on this it’s not unreasonable to ask, just how safe do you feel with your personal information online? When companies make you go through the rigermerole of choosing a password with an upper-case letter, then with a numeral, then with a special character only to be told ‘sorry, but you can’t use a previous used password, you’d hope that would mean that because you’re as secure as you can be, that they are too.

Well, companies in the UK might be about to face a major system shock. New government legislation means that if they do not improve their cyber security, they will face collosal fines.

Cyber Security – Just how little some companies care!

Hackers in recent years have become more and more brazen in their attacks or have they? It is simply a case that companies have not been keeping ahead of the game well enough? It certainly comes to something when the UK intelligence agency invests £1b in cyber security yet still admits it’s not good enough.

With online shopping and banking, you need to know your details are safe. I would like to think that most people these days are savvy online, although maybe not as many as there should be. The concern is that companies who handle this data need to be on top of the game.

Well, things might be about to get a whole lot tougher for companies as digital minister Matt Hancock has said in a statement via the BBC that companies who fail to improve their cyber security are about to get attacked where it hurts most, the pocket.

How big a fine are we talking here?

Big. Companies face fines of £17m or 4% of their annual turn over if they fail to address or improve. These are clearly quite significant sums. Hopefully this will motivate companies who take cyber security a little less seriously than they should.

I do delight in the irony that the UK government itself recently reported itself as a consistent target for cyber attacks. Presumably if an attack is ever successful they will fine themselves something appropriate. It is, however from a poll they conducted that revealed cyber attacks were at an all time high that may have prompted this firm action.

Some companies clearly do not treat cyber security seriously enough. If a fine is what it takes to make this happen, good!