Information security hits the headlines at least weekly, and both the rate and scale of newsworthy breaches are increasing.
That Portugal would breach the deficit limit had been expected, but the scale of the breach surprised and angered European Union officials, who chided the government in Lisbon for what they called incomplete and flawed economic data.
Daniel Webb, the director of legal advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre, said the revelations in the document were "more evidence of the scale of the breach and the gravity of risk that flows from it". "The breach is something that should be factored into every single person's protection claim who has been affected by it".
News had been circulating at Westminster for hours that a major security breach had occurred but MPs were taken by surprise when Darling revealed the full scale of the breach: "The missing information contains details of all child benefit recipients: records for 25 million individuals and 7.25 million families".
A range of sanctions will be available, applied "proportionately" to the scale of the breach, with exclusion from competition the hardest penalty for the deepest lossmakers.
She said SSE had avoided a larger penalty because of its "admission to its failure, its action to make amends and the small scale of the breach".
"Given SSE's admission to its failure, its action to make amends and the small scale of the breach, Ofgem believes the £100,000 payment is the right level of penalty, and will not take further action in this case".
Sure enough, Home Depot has just confirmed the scale of the breach.
We will be making enquiries with Facebook and our overseas counterparts to establish the scale of the breach and if any UK citizens have been affected".
We'll be working with the NCSC plus other relevant authorities in the UK and overseas to determine the scale of the breach, how it has affected people in the UK and what steps need to be taken by the firm to ensure it fully complies with its data protection obligations.
