The bill, to be introduced to parliament next week, comes during the fallout of the massive Optus data hack, and a cyber attack on private health insurance provider Medibank."I look forward to support from across the parliament for this bill, which is an essential part of the government's agenda to ensure Australia's privacy framework is able to respond to new challenges in the digital era," he said.
Mr Dreyfus said the legal changes reflect the expectations Australians have about their right to have their personal data protected. The legislation will beef up the powers of the Australian Information Commissioner to resolve privacy breaches, and bolster information sharing with the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
The notifiable data breaches scheme will be boosted to ensure the commissioner has a complete picture of the information compromised, to be able to provided a risk assessment of harm for people. A review of the Privacy Act will be completed by the end of this year, with recommendations to be handed down for further reforms.Recommended for you
A company invests heavily in protection from known intrusions into its system. While hackers sit back and devise new ways to get around that security. And when a hacker creates a new door into the system the company gets fined. Sensible? Surely the problem is the system itself.
I love how the government is cashing in but what about the actual customers affected? What a joke.
Fines need to be increased a million fold; they need to be company busting: maybe then big greed will sit up and take notice.
'The maximum fines for serious or repeated data breaches will be increased by more than 20-fold under legal changes ...' unless you're a political party. You're exempt from the Act. (Anyway, politicians and their staff never ever share passwords, leak or mis-use data)