Australia had five data breaches that hit 1 million or more people

Five data breaches that occurred in the back half of 2022 impacted at least 1 million people, according to the latest statistics by the the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

As iTnews reported yesterday, a freedom of information request resulted in some OAIC breach data becoming public ahead of the report’s release.

In total, there were 497 notifiable data breaches reported between July and December 2022, a 26 percent increase on the first half of the year.

The report states that five breaches affected more than 1 million individuals.

Three of the breaches are well-known: Optus (more than 2 million individuals), Woolworths MyDeal (2.2 million), and Medibank (9.7 million).

However, the identity of the other two breach victims with large-scale customer impact is not immediately clear: it could be that these have not been made public.

The report noted that 350 breaches were the result of “malicous or criminal attacks”, a rise of 41 percent over the previous half; while human error breaches fell five percent to 123 notifications.