Optus

Australia could have tough new data protection laws in place this year in an urgent response to a cyberattack that stole from a telecommunications company the personal data of 9.8 million customers, the attorney-general said Thursday.Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government would make “urgent reforms” to the Privacy Act following the unprecedented hack last week on Optus, Australia's second-largest wireless carrier.Dreyfus said “I think it's possible” for the law to be changed in the four remaining weeks that…

Australia could have tough new data protection laws in place this year in an urgent response to a cyberattack that stole from a telecommunications company the personal data of 9.8 million customers, the attorney-general said Thursday.Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government would make “urgent reforms” to the Privacy Act following the unprecedented hack last week on Optus, Australia's second-largest wireless carrier.Dreyfus said “I think it's possible” for the law to be changed in the four remaining weeks that…

Australia's current administration is calling for stronger privacy laws, following last week's cybersecurity breach that compromised personal data of 9.8 million Optus customers. Describing the cyber attack as "not technologically challenging", the government says the breach should never have happened and that Optus should pay to rectify the situation. When customers give their personal data to companies, they expect the information to be kept safe, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in parliament Wednesday.…

Australian police were investigating a purported hacker's release of the stolen personal data of 10,000 Optus customers and demand for a $1 million (roughly Rs. 8 crore) ransom in cryptocurrency, the telecommunications company's chief executive said Tuesday.The Australian government has blamed lax cybersecurity at the nation's second-largest wireless carrier for the unprecedented breach last week of the personal data of 9.8 million current and former Optus customers.Jeremy Kirk, a Sydney-based cybersecurity writer, said…

Australia's No. 2 telecoms firm Optus, hit by a massive cyber attack, faced a barrage of criticism, with the government accusing it of trying to conceal the magnitude of the breach even as reports said hackers had deleted stolen data. The Australian federal government has blamed Optus for the breach, flagged an overhaul of privacy rules and higher fines, and suggested the company had "effectively left the window open" for hackers to steal data. Optus Chief Executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said there was lot of…

SYDNEY—A cyberattack on one of Australia’s largest telecoms companies could have accessed the personal information of as many as 9.8 million customers, in what one lawmaker called the most significant data breach in recent years. Optus, an Australian unit of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. , said it doesn’t yet know who was behind the cyberattack that could have exposed customer information dating back to 2017, including names, dates of birth and phone…

Optus has suffered a security breach that it says may have compromised various customer data, including dates of birth, email addresses, and passport numbers. Information belonging to both current and former customers of the Australian mobile operator are impacted in the security incident. Optus said Thursday it was looking into "possible unauthorised access" of customer data following a cyber attack, but did not reveal details of what systems were affected, when the breach was discovered, or how many customers mights be…

Optus soon will have more autonomy to run its enterprise business, giving the Australian telco direct accountability of how it wants to navigate the unit's growth path. Its enterprise division would be transferred from Optus' parent company Singtel, so it would have "more operational autonomy" with the unit under its direct management, Singtel said in a statement Wednesday. Optus' enterprise revenue clocked at AU$1.21 billion ($843.69 million) in its financial year, ended March 2022.Effective from July 1, the move is part…

On Sunday morning, Optus announced it was increasing the monthly charge for users from AU$15 to AU$25 from August, as well as dropping its free inclusion in mobile plans. In a bid to sweeten the deal for its customers that previously did not pay, Optus is offering those customers a AU$7 per month deal. "This compares favourably with other content streaming services that have emerged in the Australian landscape and is the first change to Optus Sport's pricing since we first launched in 2016," the company said in a blog…