First cybersecurity law for the European Union gets the go ahead.

On the 6th of July the European Parliament gave its endorsement to legislation which will impose security and reporting obligations on service operators in industries such as banking, energy, transport and health, as well as on digital operators such as those providing search engines and online marketplaces.

This is the first European set of rules relating to cybersecurity and it will ensure that companies such as Amazon and Google beef up their defences against cyber attacks. 

Andreas Schwab, a German member of the EU Parliament, said that the new rules “will help prevent cyberattacks on Europe’s important interconnected infrastructures”.

The Parliament estimated that the losses resulting from network-security incidents due to human error, technical failures or cyberattacks amount to between 260 billion euros and 340 billion euros. 

By Daniel Gardener

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