European Union's First Cybersecurity Law Gets Green Light (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The European Union approved its first rules on cybersecurity, forcing businesses to strengthen defenses and companies such as Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to report attacks. The European Parliament endorsed legislation that will impose security and reporting obligations on service operators in industries such as banking, energy, transport and health and on digital operators like search engines and online marketplaces. The law, voted through on Wednesday in Strasbourg, France, also requires EU national governments to cooperate among themselves in the field of network security. The rules "will help prevent cyberattacks on Europe's important interconnected infrastructures," said Andreas Schwab, a German member of the 28-nation EU Parliament who steered the measures through the assembly. EU governments have already supported the legislation. The EU Parliament also noted that network-securitiy incidents resulting from human error, technical difficulties, technical failures or cyberattacks cause annual losses of upwards of $377 billion (340 billion euros).

Comments

Finally.

[AlphaBro]

This has been a long time coming. Companies should be held accountable for their negligence.

Re:Finally.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah right. I see companies intentionally cutting corners on every point trying to save money "getting things done". If they can get away with it, they will. The industrial sector is the worst. Please go visit your local urgent care facility and see how many people have lost fingers on a daily basis because some boss wants to "get things done" while bypassing safeties on machines.

Re:Finally.

[Opportunist]

This has nothing to do with "getting stuff done" and everything with not wanting to spend money on something that doesn't make them money. Do you think the chemical industry was too keen on buying those protection suits and air filtering for their workers? I mean, why bother, if one of them gets killed by chlorine gas, there's plenty of unemployed out there who're happy for getting a job.

They're not intentionally choosing to have exploits. They just intentionally choose to not give a shit because it's cheaper and increases the profit. Corporations are not "evil". They don't dump oil into the sea because they want to poison the fishes, they do it 'cause it saves them money.

Re:Finally.

[AmiMoJo]

Corporations are not "evil". They don't dump oil into the sea because they want to poison the fishes, they do it 'cause it saves them money.

That fits the definition of "evil" in my book.

Re:Finally.

[dave420]

Apart from the fact it has everything to do with cyber security and nothing to do with worming its way into the lives of every European. Protection of the people was exactly what people had in mind when signing up for the EU. Or are you really that ignorant of the EU? Amazing.

Brexit

[manu0601]

Will it apply to UK?

Re:Brexit

[serviscope_minor]

Depends when it's passed.

The referendum voted for Brexit, but that was not a binding referendum. That means the government can wait as long as it likes to actually leave (or in fact not), during which time we're a fully paid up member of the EU with all the rights and all the responsibilities which includes implementing any new legislation.

And even it we do leave after it, a lot of our general legislation on all sorts of things comes via Europe. The government will then have to decide what to scrap, what to keep and what to modify. I suspect most of it will just be kept as-is since it needs to be there in some form and it would be far too much work with no political capital to amend obscure laws just because.

Re:Yet another example of EU overreach

[Plammox]

Economic integration requires common legislation. At least the bureaucrats were recruited based on skill based selection procedures. Most probably, they are better qualified than the populist idiots in the national parliaments.

Re:Yet another example of EU overreach

[lordholm]

What everyone signed up for was in-fact an ever closing union, with intent of forming a proper political union. In the case of the UK, political union was heavily debated in the 1975. Although many people claim that they where deceived and they never discussed the political union, looking at the records of what was said during the 1975 referendum campaigns, and the debates in the UK parliament, it is clear that this is utter bullshit.