And what I proposed (see my revised original comment) actually protects those companies because it takes into account:
the amount of users infected
the general standards that were or were not followed by that theoretical startup rag tag team of hacks which would help paint a picture for regulators of the severity of the violation and codifying the ever-evolving concept of what is “reasonably secure”.
the market cap of said theoretical hacked corporation.
See, I figure all of those things would be accounted for in whatever civil suit gets brought against the company. Frankly, I think that's much more fair to companies both big and small because it involves a group of people working together to figure how much of a fine to levy in each individual instance, rather than having a blanket policy that may or may not account for edge cases. If the company is huge and the fuckup egregious, then the jury is (theoretically) going to throw the book at them.
At the very least, I'd want a jury in between the company and whichever government body is fining them, because regulatory bodies are prime targets for corporate shills to take over and it's harder for that to run rampant if you have a bunch of regular jackoffs acting as gatekeepers.
There's also the issue of ongoing compliance for small companies. Cybersecurity engineers are not cheap, and being all but required by law to employ one could (1) drive small companies out of business (180k a year may be cheap for Facebook, but it's definitely not for Joe Buttsniffer and Sons Catering), and (2) cause market saturation so bad that the average salary makes nobody want to do the job anymore.
Agreed. Corporate regulatory capture was a 100% success in the United States. It has been that way since at least Reagan. It always comes back to government corruption and what I see in these kinds of civil suits against corporations that were breached is a gentle slap (actually more of a caress!) on the wrist (and a wink and a nod when the cameras turn off) between the demagogues and the corporations that own them.
Yeah it really comes back to "fines are only for poor people." Google can just count the fines as the cost of doing business while simultaneously leveraging their dominance to force other companies to break regulations in order to work with them.
It’s VERY similar to how we (in the US) allow Congress to decide the rules that THEY THEMSELVES have to follow when you have the legalized bribery that is known as lobbying in the US.