By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Damien Timms, Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid and Adam Asadurian
Some key compliance dates approach for responsible entities of critical infrastructure assets under the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act (SOCI Act).
Read MoreBy Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew and Jordan Booth
Cybernews has reported on its researchers’ discovery of what could be the largest leaked password compilation of all time, with a record 9,948,575,739 plaintext passwords in a file called “rockyou2024.txt” (see article).
Read MoreBy: Cameron Abbott, Andrew Gaffney, Harry Kingsley, Rob Pulham, and Stephanie Mayhew
Australia’s corporate regulator, ASIC, has released new guidance on how to comply with market disclosure requirements when a listed company is in the middle of investigating and responding to a cyber incident.
Read MoreBy: Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew,and Maddy Bassal
Last week the federal Government released its response (the Response) to the recommendations proposed by the AGD’s Privacy Act Review Report released in February 2023 (the Report).
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By Cameron Abbott, Daniel Knight, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew, and Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid
Amid the rapid acceleration of tools like ChatGPT and global calls for tailored regulation of artificial intelligence tools, the Australia Federal Government has released a discussion paper on the safe and responsible use of AI. The Government is consulting on what safeguards are needed to ensure Australia has an appropriate regulatory and governance framework to manage the potential risks, while continuing to encourage uptake of innovative technologies.
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew and Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid
The data breach that affected 9.8 million Australians and resulted in the personal information of 10,000 Optus customers being exposed on the dark web in September last year will be litigated in a class action lawsuit filed last Friday (21 April) in the Federal Court of Australia.
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew and Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid
Proceedings led by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) against Facebook, Inc. (Facebook) for their role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal will finally proceed in the Federal Court of Australia.
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham, Stephanie Mayhew and Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid
[Featured image from a linkedin post of Office of the Australian Information Commissioner made on 3 March 2023]Shortly after the Government announced their ambition to make Australia a global leader in cyber security, Australia has been named the country with “the greatest progress and commitment toward creating a cyber defence environment” in MIT’s Cyber Defence Index of 2022/23.
However, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s latest notifiable data breaches report paints a different picture. The Commissioner reported a 26% increase in the number of total reported data breaches and a 41% increase in the number of reported data breaches arising from malicious or criminal attacks compared with the first half of 2022. Health service providers and the finance sector were the worst hit, together representing almost a third of reported data breaches.
In releasing the report, the Commissioner once again stressed the need for organisations to collect only the minimum amount of personal information required and deleting it when it is no longer needed. In the report the Commissioner has recommended a number of steps to address the kinds of issues featured in the second half of 2022, including:
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Dadar Ahmadi-Pirshahid
Not content with merely implementing broad-scale privacy reform, the Government has announced a new position, the Coordinator for Cyber Security to be added to the Department of Home Affairs as a step towards their aim of “making Australia the most cyber secure nation by 2030“. This would seem to be a rather aspirational target!
The Coordinator will be supported by a National Office for Cyber Security, and their role will be to oversee steps to prevent future cyber security incidents and to help manage cyber incidents as they occur.
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By Cameron Abbott, Rob Pulham and Stephanie Mayhew
Under proposals 4.1-4.4 of the Report, changes to broaden the definition of Personal Information are on the horizon. Under the proposed amendments, the word “about” in the definition of Personal Information will be amended to “relates to”. That is – “information or an opinion that relates to an identified individual…”. This brings the definition in line with other legislative frameworks that regulate privacy and ensures consistency with the language used in the GDPR definition of ‘Personal Data’.
Amendment of the definition of ‘collection’ is also proposed to expressly cover information obtained by any means, including inferred or generated information. The Report also states that ‘reasonably identifiable’ should be supported by a non-exhaustive list of circumstances to which APP entities will be expected to have regard to in their assessment of what is ‘Personal Information’.
What does this mean for my organisation?
With such a broader interpretation, APP entities will need to have regard to a larger set of information that could fall within the definition. This will see information such as mobile location data, IP addresses, social media handles, mobile advertising IDs and other technical information more clearly fall within the definition.
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