Australia to bring legislation for tougher penalties on hackers for data breaches
Optus
Weeks after Australian telecom giant Optus reported a major data breach, the Anthony Albanese government has announced it will be introducing new legislation in parliament to penalise heavily repeat 'privacy breach' offenders.
According to a Reuters report, the legislation lays down a plan to increasethe maximum penalty for repeated offences to $32 million from the current $1.4 million or 30 per cent of the turnover in the relevant period or three times the value of any benefit obtained through misuse of information.
"Significant privacy breaches in recent weeks have shown that the existing safeguards are inadequate. It's not enough for a penalty for a major data breach to be seen as the cost of doing business," said Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
"We need better laws to regulate how companies manage the huge amount of data they collect, and bigger penalties to incentivise better behaviour," he added.
Read more: Australia's second-largest telecom company reports major data breach in cyberattack
Australia has been plagued by instances of data hacks in recent months. Optus, after the hack, reported that databases containing home addresses, licence numbers, and passport numbers of nearly 40 per cent of the population. The firm stated that the attacker's IP address appeared to switch between countries in Europe.
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While the Optus incident had barely died down, Australia's biggest health insurer Medibank Private Ltd. also suffered a similar hack.
As reported by WION, Medibank, which covers one-sixth of Australians, said the medical information of its customers had been stolen as part of a massive breach of data.
Read more: Australia's biggest health insurer Medibank reports huge data breach
In the aftermath of the incidents, PM Albanese said he wanted to bring a policy change to protect the customers.
"We want to make sure that we change some of the privacy provisions there so that if people are caught up like this, the banks can be let know so that they can protect their customers as well,"
(With inputs from agencies)
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