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Australia plans to change privacy rulesOn Monday, after hackers targeted the country’s second-largest telecoms company, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it would allow banks to be alerted more quickly of cyberattacks against companies.
Optus, which is owned by Singtel Ltd, said last week that as many as 10 million customers, or about 40 per cent of the population, had their home addresses, driving licences and passport numbers compromised in one of Australia’s biggest data breaches.
The company said the attacker’s IP address or the computer’s unique identifier appeared to move between European countries, but declined to elaborate on how security was breached.
Albanese called the incident “a huge wake-up call” for the corporate sector, saying there were some state actors and criminal groups that wanted to access people’s data.
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“We wanted to make sure … we changed some of the privacy terms there so that if people get caught like that, the banks can be informed so they can protect their customers as well,” he told radio 4BC.
Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil told parliament she believed there was a “very significant” task of reform in addressing the legally and technically complex issues.
“An important question is whether the cybersecurity requirements we put on the country’s big telecom providers are fit for purpose,” she said.
“In other jurisdictions, a data breach of this magnitude would result in hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.”
In an emailed statement, a company spokesperson said Optus has alerted customers who have had their driver’s license or passport number stolen. It added that payment details and account passwords were not leaked.
Australia has been looking to bolster its cyber defences and has pledged to spend A$1.66 billion ($1.1 billion) over a decade in 2020 to bolster the cyber infrastructure of companies and homes.
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