Yahoo! Fined Only £250k for Customer Data Breach

The UK's ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) has fined Yahoo! a nominal £250,000, for a cyber-attack in which the data of 500 million of the online giant's international users was placed at risk.

Because the data breach took place in 2014, the ICO investigated it under the Data Protection Act 1998. Findings included that Yahoo! UK Services failed to take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect the data of 515,121 customers against 'exfiltration by unauthorised persons'. In addition, the company failed to take appropriate measures to ensure that its data processor - Yahoo! Inc - complied with the appropriate data protection standards, or to ensure appropriate monitoring was in place to protect the credentials of employees with access to its customer data. The incident was publicly disclosed in September 2016, almost two years after it had taken place and the inadequacies found had been in place for a long period of time without being discovered or addressed.

ICO Deputy Commissioner of Operations James Dipple-Johnstone (pictured) commented: 'People expect that organisations will keep their personal data safe from malicious intruders who seek to exploit it. The failings our investigation identified are not what we expect from a company that had ample opportunity to implement appropriate measures, and potentially stop UK citizens' data being compromised'.

Web site: www.ico.org.uk .