The Australian government has announced changes to its consumer privacy rules in order to protect the exposed customers whose personal details were stolen in a major cyberattack on the country’s second-largest wireless carrier here on Thursday.
The amendments to the consumer privacy regulations authorize Optus and other service providers to better organize with the financial institutions and the government to mitigate and detect the risk of cyber security occurrence, scams, fraud, and other malicious cyber activities, according to communications minister officials.
The new regulations are meant to reduce the impact of the data breach on Optus customers and authorize financial institutions to implement strengthened safeguards and monitoring, the communication minister officials said.
Biggest data breach in Australia
The personal data stolen was reordered in every one in three Australians. The breach was done through an anonymous online account which affected 40 percent of the country’s population.
The data breach also affected the expired identifications and personal information of one million customers. Optus also explained that the revealed information does not contain any valid or existing document identification numbers of over 8 million customers
On September 21, Optus communications owned by Singapore Telecommunication Limited lost records of over 10 million present and former customers including national health care identification numbers, driver’s licenses, and passports, officials added.
Australian government amends privacy act through parliament
The government of Australia can make changes to telecommunication regulations without recommendations to the parliament.
However, the Australian government is planning to pass the amendments to the privacy act directed to parliament during the last four parliament sittings weeks of 2022 following the Optus breach.
The Optus communication conveyed to its customers through advertisements in Australian newspapers on October 1 with the message ‘we are deeply sorry ’.
The advertisement also gives information regarding cyber-attacks by including a link to the Optus website. On the website, customers can go through some instructions to avoid fraud and identity theft.
Recent changes allow high penalties for companies
The amendments of regulations include raises in penalties for companies with careless cyber security protections.
Besides restrictions on the quantities and types of customer data that businesses can collect and the duration for which personal information can be kept.
In September, the data breach was considered Australia’s biggest data breach with over 10 million data theft recorded.
The government of Australia will put forward to the governor-general to allow changes in the privacy regulations, the officials of the Australian government said.
The suggestive changes will also allow for the rise in cyber detection in the broader financial services sector. The detection is through the present industry mechanisms to submit deceitful transactions such as fraud information exchanges.
The government of Australia is not going to reveal the details of financial institutions that obtain the information from Optus on account of data security reasons, the officials said.
Australian sectors are on high alert after the Optus breach
According to the treasurer, Financial institutions must destroy the information that is no longer required. However, the information can only be utilized for the primary purpose of checking or answering cyber security incidents, scams, fraud, or identity theft.Â
The Australian government sectors, financial institutions, and telecommunications sectors are on high alert ever since the cyber attack occurred at Optus, the treasurer added.
The attack has pointed out changes to the privacy rules to ease financial institutions to take immediate actions to prevent fraudulent transactions.
The Australian government criticized the Optus company for reporting the attack as an advanced one and also for the delay in updating the affected customers.
 The government also believes the breach at Optus was due to a basic security gap.
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