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‘Privacy Shield’ Regulation Ruled Invalid by EU Court, Complicating EU-US Data Transfer


Another blow has been struck to US companies wishing to do business in the European Union, as the ‘Privacy Shield’ regulation which allowed EU citizen data to be transferred to and processed in the US has been deemed invalid by the European Court of Justice. Privacy Shield was itself designed to replace an older data transfer mechanic/regulation called ‘Safe Harbor’, which also met the wrath of European lawmakers back in 2015.

The EU-US Privacy Shield, like Safe Harbor before it, has been deemed invalid by the European Court of Justice.
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Irish Businesses Hit by Invoice Redirect Scams, Gardaí Warn

Gardaí have reported a sharp increase in the number of invoice redirect and CEO fraud-style attacks on Irish businesses in the last few months. “We are getting a couple of cases every week now”, according to Detective Superintendent Pat Lordan, who said that both small and large companies are being hit for amounts ranging from €10,000 into the millions.

Staff should be very wary of any requests to change payment details from suppliers, and are advised to pick up the phone and speak to someone they know first.
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First Large GDPR-Era Fine Handed Down to British Airways (£183m)

In a move that is likely to shock corporations in Europe and beyond, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined British Airways (BA) just over £183 million, due to a 2018 data breach in which personal data belonging to 500,000 of its’ customers was compromised. The move marks the first large fine handed down to a company since the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) took effect in May of last year and, shockingly, was less than 50% of the maximum fine that the ICO could have set for BA.

In 2018, British Airways suffered a breach that exposed credit card info, names, addresses, travel details and login credentials for 500,000 customers
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Irish Companies Reporting Less Than 5% of Cyber Crime

Irish companies are believed to be reporting less than 5% of cyber attacks to police, according to disparities between figure from the Garda cyber crime unit and reports from private cyber security companies. Detective Superintendent and Head of the Garda Nation Cyber Crime Bureau, Michael Gubbins, has said that brand damage and embarrassment are among reasons given by companies for the under-reporting of cyber crime to the Gardai.


Gardai believe that companies are afraid of brand damage, leading to a vast under-reporting of cyber crime to authorities.

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Eir Loses Unencrypted Laptop Containing 37,000 Customers’ Details

Eir is back in hot water again with the Data Protection Commissioner after the company issued a statement stating that it had lost an unencrypted staff laptop containing the details of 37,000 Eir customers. Eir has said that the data contained names, email addresses and customer account number, but that no financial details were compromised in the breach.


Eir is no stranger to data breaches, and has reported having multiple laptops with customer data lost or stolen in the past

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