BA fined record £20m for customer data breach

Personal details of more than 400,000 customers accessed by hackers in 2018

British Airways has been fined a record £20m for a data breach in which more than 400,000 customers’ personal details were compromised by hackers in 2018.

The fine is the biggest ever issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), but a fraction of the £183m fine initially announced last year. This was reduced after investigators accepted BA’s representations about the circumstances of the attack; and was reduced further to take into account the dire financial position of BA since the onset of Covid-19.