Australia’s biggest health insurer Medibank Private recently revealed that a hack had compromised the data of all of its nearly 4 million customers. What’s more, the hack affected all personal and significant amounts of health claims, the company explained.
Following the announcement, shares in the company fell more than 14%, which is its biggest one-day slide since listing in 2014.
“Our investigation has now established that this criminal has accessed all our private health insurance customers’ personal data and significant amounts of their health claims data,” chief executive David Koczkar said in a statement. “I apologize unreservedly to our customers. This is a terrible crime – this is a crime designed to cause maximum harm to the most vulnerable members of our community.”
Medibank, which covers one-sixth of Australians, confirmed that its IT systems had not been encrypted by ransomware to date and that it would continue to monitor for any further suspicious activity.
“Everywhere we have identified a breach, it is now closed,” John Goodall, Medibank’s top technology executive, clarified.
The Medibank hack is just the latest in a string of similar incidents in Australia (and elsewhere, for that matter) that has alarmed the government and corporate sector.
The country’s second-largest telco, Singapore Telecommunications-owned Optus, said last month about 10 million customer accounts, or 40% of the Australian population, had data taken by a hacker demanding payment.
Meanwhile, the Australian government said it would introduce fines of up to A$50 million for companies on the receiving end of data breaches. Guess the idea is to force them to invest more in the security of their systems, and in that sense – we like how that sounds. Heck, we would like to see similar policies introduced across the world, all in an effort to keep our personal information safe.
In the meantime, and as we’ve said before, there is little you can do when a data breach like this takes place. You can, however, make sure that your data remains private while surfing the web or doing anything else on the Internet. For that, you should get yourself a good VPN and have it turned on at all times. And you know where to find a good great VPN, right? 😉