160,000 GDPR Data Breach Notifications Reported Across 28 European Union Member States

According to DLA Piper‘s latest GDPR Data Breach Survey, data protection regulators have imposed €114 million (approximately $126 million/GBP97 million) in fines under the GDPR regime for a wide range of GDPR infringements, not just for data breaches.

France, Germany and Austria top the rankings for the total value of GDPR fines imposed with just over €51 million, €24.5 million and €18 million respectively. The Netherlands, Germany and the UK topped the table for the number of data breaches notified to regulators with 40,647, 37,636 and 22,181 notifications each.

Commenting on the 2020 report, Ross McKean, partner, DLA Piper, specialising in cyber and data protection, said: “GDPR has driven the issue of data breach well and truly into the open. The rate of breach notification has increased by over 12% compared to last year’s report and regulators have been busy road-testing their new powers to sanction and fine organisations.“

The highest GDPR fine to date was €50 million imposed by the French data protection regulator on Google, for alleged infringements of the transparency principle and lack of valid consent, rather than for a data breach. Following two high profile data breaches, the UK ICO published two notices of intent to impose fines in July 2019 totaling GBP282 million (approximately €329 million/$366 million) although neither of these were finalised as at the date of this report.

Patrick Van Eecke, chair, DLA Piper’s international data protection practice, said: “The early GDPR fines raise many questions. Ask two different regulators how GDPR fines should be calculated and you will get two different answers. We are years away from having legal certainty on this crucial question, but one thing is for certain, we can expect to see many more fines and appeals over the coming years.“