alt Hacker NewsIf I'm not terrible at my math...
T-Mobile earned $8 billion in 2023. Some division later, that works out to $21,000,000 per day.
They were fined less than one day's income. If I owned that company, increasing IT security would be near the bottom of my list of priorities.
Replies
Is the $8B profit or revenue?
To your point, $16M is surely not a big fine for such a big company though, but I do think it's important not conflate profit and revenue when evaluating fines.
Generally speaking, I would love to see some much harsher penalties for negligence with data. I want companies to start seeing customer data as a liability, not as an asset, and I don't think that will happen until f**k-ups starts really making a dent in the bank account.
The equivalent of about $200 for someone making $100,000/yr
As part of the agreement, TMobile has to harden IT security and show proof (e.g., CISO who reports regularly to feds, adoption of Zero Trust, adoption of minimal data retention policy). Why TMobile must have their hand held like this is beyond me.