The MediSecure data breach does include potentially sensitive details of pharmacy prescriptions, but an apparent lack of structure to the stolen database means that these health details might not be directly linked with the leaked names.
A new three-stage A$587 million cybersecurity plan from the Australian government promises gradual but major changes over the next seven years, with some elements to take place in the very near future.
The shutdown of port operations in Australia due to a cyber incident lasted roughly three days, during which time about 30,000 cargo containers that were scheduled to unload were backed up.
Australian law firm HWL Ebsworth, trusted by numerous federal agencies and the country’s biggest banks, has suffered a data breach. Law firm said it became aware of the incident when stolen information was offered up on the dark web on April 28.
Latitude, a major financial service provider in Australia, has lost about 14 million customer records to a data breach. The incident previously reported that 328,000 records had been exposed.
Privacy breaches are about to cost companies operating in Australia quite a bit more money in fines, as the country has raised the maximum penalty from AUD 2.2 million to AUD 50 million.
Australia’s string of major data breaches have prompted quick and dramatic action by the government to shore up the nation’s cybersecurity. The most recent is the announcement of a new cyber task force that will spend all of its time pursuing these criminal hackers, whether domestic or foreign.
At least 17,500 of the leaked ACL records contained some sort of pathology patient data. About 28,000 of the records went to the dark web accompanied by a credit card number, and 3,300 included a CVV.
Australia has been experiencing a string of high-profile data breaches since late September, and the latest incident in the trend is the theft of 200 GB of medical records from health insurance provider Medibank.