Two years ago, Ticketmaster suffered a data breach , and is now paying the consequences, as the British ICO imposed a fine of $1.65 million on the company for the aforementioned breach.
The Ticketmaster breach incident
In June 2018, Ticketmaster disclosed a data breachthat it said only affected 5% of its customers. However, it was a serious breach that affected both UK customers and international users.
Initially, the exact number of customers affected during the incident remained unclear. The service also tried to blame the widget powered by Inbenta Technologies.
However, Inbenta clearly explained the issue, disclosing the flaw to Ticketmaster. At the same time, banking institution Monzo also revealed that it had already informed Ticketmaster about the same issue two months before the official disclosure of the breach.
ICO fines Ticketmaster
As more investigations into the incident at Ticketmaster became available, it became clear that the company would have to pay a fine under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This appears to be the case after the UK ICO imposed a fine of £1.25 million ($1.65 million) on the company. According to the details released, the breach affected 9.4 million customers across Europe, with 1.5 million in the UK alone. As such, the fine has been imposed under the EU’s GDPR (as the breach occurred before Brexit ).
However, the fine Ticketmaster is now required to pay is not the largest possible for such cases, since the ICO took into account the current economic situation due to the COVID-19, with the company "falling on its knees".
According to Deputy Commissioner James Dipple-Johnstone, this fine will also serve as a lesson to other organisations. It will make them realise the importance of keeping their customers' data safe and will force them to pay more attention to the security of their systems.
