Factbox: Australia Inc roiled by raft of cyberattacks this year

Australian Clinical Labs

14/12/2022 02:43

(Updates to add Telstra and TPG Telecom incidents)
       Dec 14 (Reuters) - Australian firms have suffered a
flood of cyberattacks, putting the spotlight on country's
understaffed cybersecurity industry which experts say seems
ill-equipped to tackle such hacks, thus endangering sensitive
information of millions of people.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N32000S
    Here is a list of companies that have been hit by data
breaches so far this year:
    OPTUS
    Australia's second-largest mobile operator and a unit of
Singapore Telecommunications  STEL.SI  was the first to report a
data breach that affected up to 10 million customers, about 40%
of the nation's population. The data exposed included home
addresses, drivers' licences and passport numbers.
    MEDIBANK
    Health insurer Medibank Private  MPL.AX , which covers about
one-sixth of Australians, said personal and significant amounts
of health claims data of around 9.7 million of its current and
former customers was compromised, forcing it to flag a hit to
earnings and withdraw forecast for a key metric.
    WOOLWORTHS
    Australia's biggest grocer Woolworths Group Ltd  WOW.AX 
said its majority-owned online retailer MyDeal identified that a
"compromised user credential" was used to access its systems,
exposing email addresses, phone numbers and delivery addresses
of about 2.2 million customers.
    AUSTRALIAN CLINICAL LABS 
    Australian Clinical Labs Ltd  ACL.AX , one of the country's
largest pathology providers, said unit Medlab suffered a breach
that exposed data of about 223,000 patients. 
    TELSTRA
    Australia's largest telecoms operator Telstra  TLS.AX  in
early October suffered what it called a small data breach, which
exposed data of about 30,000 current and former employees dating
back to 2017.
        On Dec. 11, Telstra 
    said 132,000 customers were affected by an internal error
which led to the disclosure of certain customer details.
    DAILOG
    IT services consulting firm Dailog, another unit of
Singapore Telecommunications  STEL.SI , said it faced a cyber
attack that potentially affected 1,000 current and former
employees and fewer than 20 clients.
    FORCENET
    Australia's Assistant Minister For Defence Matt
Thistlethwaite said hackers targeted a communications platform
used by the country's military personnel and defence staff with
a ransomware attack but that no data was compromised.
    BWX
    Skin and hair care products maker BWX Limited said a
malicious code was "unlawfully" entered onto one of its websites
that may have compromised credit card numbers and expiry dates
of about 2,500 customers.
        TPG TELECOM
  
        Australia's No.2 internet service provider TPG Telecom
 TPG.AX  said it had been notified of unauthorised access to a
hosted exchange service that hosts email accounts of up to
15,000 business customers.
 (Compiled by Jaskiran Singh and Rishav Chatterjee in Bengaluru;
Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Rashmi Aich)
 ((Jaskiran.Singh@thomsonreuters.com))