News

Australia: Inadequate data backup to be punished more severely

In response to the growing number of serious data leaks, Australia’s Justice Minister wants to drastically increase the penalties for inadequate data backup. Companies are to be encouraged to store less data, delete it more quickly and back it up better.

Penalties to increase significantly

So far, the maximum penalty in Australia for data leaks resulting from inadequate protective measures taken by the company concerned is 2.2 million Australian dollars. This corresponds to around 1.43 million euros. This maximum penalty is to increase noticeably. The following penalty options are envisaged: The penalty is to be either up to 32.2 million euros, three times the profit generated by the data misuse, or 30 percent of the company’s adjusted revenue in the relevant period. In each case, the option with the highest penalty is to be chosen.

More and more data leaks

The new rule is in response to an accumulation of serious data leaks in the recent past. Justice Minister Mark Dreyfus sees these as evidence that existing safeguards were not sufficient and that people’s data from Australia was not secure. Dreyfus now wants to push companies harder to ensure that data is well secured. Henceforth, negligence should have tangible financial consequences. According to AP, the law is to come into force this year.

Recently, for example, the Australian communications company Optus attracted negative attention. Personal data of more than ten million customers of the company have been tapped. More than a third of the Australian population is affected by this data leak – and thus more vulnerable to identity theft and other consequences of a lack of data protection. Shortly after, health insurer Medibank also suffered a data leak. The company stated that the attackers had proven to have the data of at least 100 people. Allegedly, a total of 200 GB of data was stolen. The incident attracted particular attention because the attackers threatened to contact and put pressure on celebrities from Australia whose data had been stolen.

Simon Lüthje

I am co-founder of this blog and am very interested in everything that has to do with technology, but I also like to play games. I was born in Hamburg, but now I live in Bad Segeberg.

Related Articles

Neue Antworten laden...

Avatar of Basic Tutorials
Basic Tutorials

Gehört zum Inventar

7,958 Beiträge 2,106 Likes

In response to the growing number of serious data leaks, Australia’s Justice Minister wants to drastically increase the penalties for inadequate data backup. Companies are to be encouraged to store less data, delete it more quickly and back it up better. Penalties to increase significantly So far, the maximum penalty in Australia for data leaks … (Weiterlesen...)

Antworten Like

Back to top button