British Airways could reach a settlement over the 2018 data breach

Back in 2018 British Airways was hit by a data breach affecting up to 500 000 data subjects – customers as well as British Airways staff.

Following the breach the UK’s Information Commissioners Office (ICO) has fined British Airways firstly in 2019 with a record fine of £183.000.000 (€ 205.000.000), due to the severe consequences of the breach. As reported beside inter alia e-mail addresses of the concerned data subjects also credit card information have been accessed by the hackers.

The initial record fine has been reduced by the ICO in 2020 after British Airways appealed against it. The ICO announced the final sanction in October 2020 –  £20.000.000 (€ 22.000.000). Reason for the reduction has been inter alia the current COVID-19 situation and it’s consequences for the Aviation industry.

Most recently it has been published that British Airways also came to a settlement in a UK breach class action with up to 16 000 claimants. The details of the settlement have been kept confidential, so that the settlement sum is not known, but the law firm, PGMBM, representing the claimants, as well as British Airways announced the settlement on July 6th.

PGMBM further explains, that the fine of the ICO “did not provide redress to those affected”, but that “the settlement now addresses” the consequences for the data subjects, as reported by the BBC.