U.K. Merger Watchdog Suffers 150 Data Breaches in Two Years

The U.K. government’s antitrust regulator was hit by 150 personal data breaches in the last two years, as hackers targeted its trove of sensitive business information.

The Competition and Markets Authority found 81 cases of unauthorized disclosure of information and 40 devices were lost or stolen -- two of them unencrypted -- according to freedom of information documents.

The watchdog handles internal business reports, copies of emails and other internal data. Leaks could potentially allow interested parties to profit from such data or even attempt to influence the outcome of a takeover, although there was no evidence that the CMA’s ...