A fine of £20 million for BA - the largest fine so far

British Airways was fined for a hack of customer and employee data  

BA failed to take adequate measures to keep security and private details protected

A British Airways spokeswoman said: "We alert customers as soon as we learn of the criminal attack on our systems in 2018 and regret that we have not met our customers' expectations.¨

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British Airways has been fined £20 million for a 2018 hack of data, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced. The researchers found that the airline should have identified the security weaknesses that allowed the attack to occur.

The operator failed to protect the personal and financial data of over 400,000 customers, ICO said.

It did not detect the hack for more than two months.

The attacker is believed to have potentially accessed the personal data of approximately 429,612 customers and employees. This included names, addresses, payment card numbers and the three digits on the back of cards for 77,000 customers, and card numbers for 108,000 customers only.

Also potentially accessed were usernames and passwords for British Airways' employee and administrator accounts, as well as usernames and PINs for up to 612 of the airline's Executive Club accounts.