This big difference is that this isn't just "the bridge fell over". In the case of a cyber attack, it's more like "a terrorist detonated a bomb on the bridge and blew it up". And in such a case, I think it would be a pretty big stretch to blame the engineer who designed the bridge.
"Somone crashed into the bridge support pillar in the median and the bridge fell down" sounds like the fault of the engineer.
"A foreign nation sent a fighter jet" doesn't.
I don't have any ideas on how to have a reasonable standard of "this is the sort of attack you shouldn't fall to," though. How do you keep this from being years outdated very quickly?
I'm not suggesting that every data breach results in jail time, just like not every bridge collapse results in jail time either. There should be an investigation that determines the cause and whether that cause was foreseeable. The other engineering disciplines seem to have it adequately figured out, software isn't that different. I also don't think you should be facing life or anything, maybe something as small as a fine would work.
Ultimately the data breaches will continue to happen as long as the personal incentives of the people building data systems aren't aligned with the users, and the GDPR does nothing to address that.
At the same time, you can ruin someone's life through a data-breach. Imagine you are on one of these dating apps and your boss takes a gander at the leaks and fires you because of your private life. Or worse, some bigots show up at your house and burn a cross in your yard.
So how do we fix a situation where the person responsible for securing your data has no skin in the game? Put their head on the block. Other engineering disciplines hold the PE liable for mistakes because they recognize the stakes involved. I think that assigning liability is absolutely appropriate for building systems with PII.
Product certifications would be great too, although that would be done by a PE so you'd kill two birds with one stone by licensing Data Engineers.
GDPR solves that because if you want to do business with European citizens you must comply with it no matter where you are. GDPR is not only about the fines, it stablishes protocols to communicate breaches, makes somebody responsible for it (the DPO) and makes distinctions between the different types of data and the requirements to handle it.
Also, enforcing GDPR is no joke, and we are still learning its consequences (http://www.london-registrars.co.uk/first-prison-sentence-ari...).
As I see it, Licensed Data Engineers won't make companies more careful with our data, since all they need to do is to sue them and fire them when there is a problem. We need laws that make data hard to use, so companies will only ask for what they really need, will use the data with a purpose and will store it only while it's useful.
Software is more similar to a car than it is to a bridge. Companies build and sell them all over the world. Cars are certified at each country as needed, but it doesn't matter who is building them, as long as they meet all the requirements. Software should be similar.
This implies there is a perfect scenario of security, but even the best security experts can still have breaches, it's unfair to punish people acting in good faith.
Then if you have a data breach you can investigate and potentially pull the license and assign personal liability similar to if a bridge fell over.