By Warwick Andersen, Rob Pulham and Keely O’Dowd
Following on from Friday’s blog, we have looked at a particular aspect of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Notifiable Data Breaches Scheme quarterly report in more detail.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
It’s been just over 6 weeks since the government’s notifiable data breach scheme came into force and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has revealed it has received 63 reports of data breaches since the scheme’s start date of February 22. The figure released as part of the OAIC’s first quarterly report on the scheme.
This is somewhat of a stark contrast to the 114 voluntary notifications for data breaches received by the OAIC in the 2016-17 financial year, before the scheme was in place.
By Rob Pulham, Warwick Andersen and Georgia Mills
In another blow to embattled Facebook, British and US lawyers have launched a class action lawsuit against the social media giant, along with Cambridge Analytica and two other companies for allegedly misusing the data of over 87 million people.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
Over the last few weeks we’ve been blogging about the data “sharing” scandal that has rocked Facebook, and has lead to a boycott of the popular social media site, and sent CEO Mark Zuckerberg to face the music on Capitol Hill.
In case you’d missed the story (which you can read about here, here and here), Facebook estimated 87 million people globally, including 300,000 Australians, had their data shared with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy firm used by US President Donald Trump in his 2016 election campaign.
By Cameron Abbott and Sarah Goegan
Travel-booking site Orbitz confirmed that it has suffered a major data security breach, in which details of up to 880,000 credit cards were compromised.
By Cameron Abbott and Georgia Mills
News of Facebook’s involvement in the United States’ elections is nothing new, especially with the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal, so it should come as little surprise that the social media giant has extended its reach into the Australian electoral sphere.
Facebook approached Australia’s major political parties during the 2016 Federal election offering a powerful data matching tool. This “advanced matching” tool would allow parties to match data they had collected about voters- including names, dates of birth, contact details, and postcodes- against similar information provided by users on their Facebook profiles. The combined data would allow parties to identify swinging voters and target them with tailored ads when they use Facebook.
By Cameron Abbott and Samantha Tyrrell
It has been alleged that Cambridge Analytica, a political data analytics firm specialising in psychological profiling, has tapped more than 50 million users’ Facebook profiles without their consent and subsequently used the data to assist Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral campaign.
By Cameron Abbott, Keely O’Dowd and Samantha Tyrrell
Bug Bounty Programs (BBPs) actively encourage hackers to explore a company’s systems and report back on any vulnerability they discover. Often, pre-determined financial incentives are offered to the “security researcher” in return for their findings. The attraction of this process is obvious; rather than suffering a cyber incident that could – and for many organisations has – cost millions of dollars and resulted in reputational damage, companies can instead make a comparatively small payment to ethical “white hat” hackers with the intention of pre-empting an incident.
By Cameron Abbott and Keely O’Dowd
Over the weekend our closest neighbours agreed to greater cooperation on cyber security. The Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Secretary-General of ASEAN and Australian leaders met in Sydney to strengthen the ASEAN-Australia relationship. The leaders discussed issues of regional importance.
By Cameron Abbott and Allison Wallace
The Australian Federal Police are investigating two members of the Bureau of Meteorology’s IT team for allegedly running an operation in which they made use of the Bureau’s powerful computers to “mine” cryptocurrencies.
It was revealed late last week that the AFP raided the Bureau’s Melbourne CBD offices on February 28, and questioned the two employees. No charges have been laid, or arrests made.
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