Australia has announced its intentions to tighten privacy regulation following a data breach at the country’s second-largest telecommunications company.
The personal data of up to 10 million customers, about 40% of the population, has been compromised by hackers, reported Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecoms Ltd.
While Optus stressed that payment details and account passwords remained secure, some customers have had their addresses, driver’s licenses and passport numbers exposed.
Those whose driver’s licenses or passport numbers were stolen have been alerted, the telecommunications company said, adding that it would provide hard-hit customers with free credit monitoring and identity protection through credit bureau Equifax for a year.
Although the company neglected to explain how the security breach occurred, it did say that the attacker’s IP address appeared to be moving around every country in Europe. According to local reports, an unidentified party had requested $1 million in cryptocurrency in exchange for the data on an online forum, although Optus had not confirmed its authenticity.
“Big wake-up call” – Prime Minister
In response to one of the country’s biggest data breaches, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has called for more responsible privacy regulations that would force companies to notify banks faster when they experience cyber hacks.
Calling the incident a “huge wake-up call” for the corporate sector, Albanese acknowledged that some state actors and criminal groups want access to people’s data.
“We want to make sure that we change some of the privacy provisions there so that if people get caught in this way, it can be reported to the banks, so they can protect their customers as well,” he told radio station 4BC. .
Meanwhile, cybersecurity minister Clare O’Neil has held Optus responsible for the breach. He stressed that such failures in other jurisdictions would lead to fines of more than hundreds of millions of dollars, such as laws in Europe that penalize companies 4% of global revenue for privacy violations.
“An important question is whether the cybersecurity requirements we impose on large telecommunications providers in this country are fit for purpose,” O’Neil told Parliament.
Crypto scams on the rise in Australia
Although this case is more of a potential ransomware case, Australians have lost more than AU$242.45 million to cryptocurrency and investment scams so far this year, according to recent data from ScamWare.
In response, a new division of the Federal Police was recently established in Australia to combat money laundering based on virtual assets. Stefan Jerga, national head of criminal forfeiture at the Australian Federal Police (AFP), revealed that the new task force has already surpassed its 2024 target of reducing AUD 600 million in illicit profits.
In general terms, Blockchain technology is very secure, due to its cryptographic algorithm that protects cryptocurrencies. The algorithm is already a security measure against hackers.
If the hackers cannot hack the crypto itself, their obvious target will be the users. They will look for loopholes in security and hack the platform you use to store your digital assets to line their pockets. Therefore, the first and most important security tip is to take security measures and take them seriously. Some of these measures are the following: using complex passwords, avoiding public WiFi connections, being aware of phishing scams, not storing cryptocurrencies in exchanges, buying a hardware wallet, and keeping your cryptocurrency assets in private
By Audy Castaneda
