IT Security & Privacy

A French privacy regulator spent part of its week explaining why a pile of health data with the names removed is not the same thing as anonymity. That distinction just cost IQVIA €5 million.France’s data protection authority, the CNIL, announced the sanction against the company, a subsidiary of the healthcare analytics and consulting giant IQVIA, over its handling of two large health data warehouses containing information sourced from pharmacies and doctors across France.

New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner released Phase 1 findings from an inquiry into the incident, concluding that both Health New Zealand and Manage My Health breached Rule 5 of the Health Information Privacy Code by failing to ensure reasonable security safeguards were in place to protect patient information.

New York State Department of Financial Services Acting Superintendent Kaitlin Asrow issued new guidance advising regulated entities on the kinds of cybersecurity measures they should consider when threat conditions materially worsen. The department pointed specifically to geopolitical instability and the release of frontier AI models as examples of developments that can rapidly change the threat landscape and justify stronger defensive measures.

7-Eleven disclosed that an unauthorized third party gained access on April 8 to certain company systems containing franchisee records, according to a notice sent to affected individuals. The company said the compromised documents included information submitted during the franchise application process, including names, addresses, and other unspecified personal data elements.

France’s data protection authority received more than 20,000 complaints last year, handled over 6,000 data breach notifications, and issued nearly €487 million in fines as cybersecurity incidents and privacy enforcement continued to intensify across the country.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority said this week that it has fined MLU BV, the Netherlands-based company behind the European version of the taxi app Yango, €100 million for unlawfully transferring personal data from Norway and Finland to Russia.

A cyberattack that quietly unfolded inside the systems of South Staffordshire Water for nearly two years has resulted in a hefty regulatory penalty and renewed scrutiny of cybersecurity standards across critical infrastructure providers in the UK.