“Cathay Pacific fined £500,000 over customer data protection failure”, 4 March 2020

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has fined Cathay Pacific Airways £500,000 for failing to protect customers' personal data.

The UK watchdog said the airline's computer systems had exposed details of 111,578 UK residents and a further 9.4 million people from other countries.

These included names, passport details, dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses and travel history.

"Appropriate security" was not in place between October 2014 and May 2018.

The ICO said Cathay Pacific became aware of a problem in March 2018, when it suffered a "brute force" password-guessing attack.

The Hong Kong-based firm reported this to the ICO. The regulator said it subsequently uncovered "a catalogue of errors" during a follow-up investigation, including:

-        back-up files that were not password protected

-        internet-facing servers without the latest patches

-        operating systems that were no longer supported by the developer

-        inadequate anti-virus protection

At least one attack involved a server with a known vulnerability - but the fix was never applied, despite having been public knowledge for more than 10 years.

Steve Eckersley, the ICO's director of investigations, said there were "a number of basic security inadequacies across Cathay Pacific's system, which gave easy access to the hackers".

The airline failed four out of five of the basic cyber-essentials guidance from the National Cyber Security Centre, he added…

In a statement about the fine, Cathay Pacific said it "would once again like to express its regret, and to sincerely apologise for this incident".

It said "substantial amounts" of money had been spent on security in the past three years.

"However, we are aware that in today's world, as the sophistication of cyber-attackers continues to increase, we need to and will continue to invest in and evolve our IT security systems."

[Also referred to British Airways and Marriott Hotel Group]