The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been enforced for over a year. During that time, financial services businesses have incurred the bulk of the fines from the law.
So far 68 fines have been issued across 68 countries, according to the Irish Times. Of those, the Czech Republic, Germany and Hungary had each seen the issuing of nine fines each whereas Belgium, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden have issued only one fine each.
While Ireland was among the countries who had issued a fine yet, the nation’s lead regulator Helen Dixon recently said she expected that her first major decision will be about WhatsApp. “I expect that file to land on my desk in the next fortnight,” she said.
Of the companies slammed with penalties for breaking the GDPR rules, the financial services sector had incurred the most with 11 fines in total. This was followed by professional services and the public sector that had been given seven and five fines each. Most fines were issued for failing to live up with the rules regarding the processing of personal data.
The news comes after research from compliance company Egress revealed that more than half of UK businesses fail to live up GDPR. That was despite 96% of them having invested in GDPR compliance over the previous year.
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