Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with&nbsp;New Jersey Monthly&nbsp;magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for&nbsp;Aviation International News&nbsp;in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.

Senior Editor

Gregory Polek

The UK's&nbsp;Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has&nbsp;fined British Airways £20 million ($25.9 million)—the largest penalty the office has ever imposed—for failing to protect the personal and financial details of more than 400,000 of its customers, the ICO said Friday.

 


An ICO investigation found the airline processed a “significant amount” of personal data without adequate security measures in place. The failure broke data protection law and, subsequently, BA became the subject of a 2018 cyberattack during 2018 that it did not detect for more than two months, said the ICO.

 


ICO investigators found that BA should have identified weaknesses in its security and resolved them with security measures available at the time.

 


“People entrusted their personal details to BA and BA failed to take adequate measures to keep those details secure,” said information commissioner Elizabeth Denham in a statement. “Their failure to act was unacceptable and affected hundreds of thousands of people, which may have caused some anxiety and distress as a result. That’s why we have issued BA with a £20m fine—our biggest to date.”

 


Because the BA breach happened in June 2018, before the UK left the EU, the ICO investigated on behalf of all EU authorities, and the other European authorities have approved the penalty.

 


The ICO believes the attacker to have potentially accessed the personal data of 429,612 customers and staff. The information included names, addresses, payment card numbers, and card verification value numbers of some 244,000 BA customers. The office also said the attacker potentially accessed user names and passwords of BA employee and administrator accounts as well as usernames and PINs of up to 612 BA Executive Club accounts.

News about commercial airlines, including regulations, aircraft orders, safety, acquisitions, and mergers.

British Airways Fined for Failing To Protect Customer Data

The UK's Information Commissioner’s Office imposed its largest penalty ever against BA for processing personal data without adequate security measures. 

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News and developments about airplanes, helicopters and unmanned air vehicles used in all varieties of operations, including airlines, military, business, commercial, general aviation and private.

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News and issues relating to international air transport and cargo carriers, national airlines and regional airlines, including aircraft, engines, personnel, acquisitions, accidents, safety, security and training.

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News and issues relating to the aerospace industry that are related to the science, engineering and business of flight in space involving civil, industrial and military applications, and similar topics related to flight in the atmosphere of the Earth that are not covered more directly by other AINonline subject channels. In other words, both astronautical and aeronautical subjects, except for those aeronautical topics that are specifically covered elsewhere on this website.

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