Latest Data Breach Report and Trends

The latest Notifiable data breaches report was released last week, highlighting the need for organisations to strengthen data security and promptly respond to suspected breaches.  The Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk said that ‘OAIC expects organisations to have robust and proactive procedures in place to protect the personal information they hold.’ The January to June 2023 period saw 409 data breaches reported to the OAIC. While that was a 16% decrease in the number of notifications compared to the previous period, there was one breach that affected more than 10 million Australians. This is the first breach of this scale for Australians since the scheme began in 2018. Cybersecurity incidents were the source of 42% of all breaches (172 notifications). The top three cyber-attack methods were ransomware (53 notifications), compromised or stolen credentials for which the method was unknown (50 notifications) and phishing (33 notifications). Contact, identity and financial information […]