Services Australia now has the Optus data it asked for

Services Australia is now in possession of data it had requested from Optus that will enable the agency to understand which citizens have Medicare or other identity numbers that need replacing.

Government services minister Bill Shorten told Sky News yesterday that the agency had seen “progress” following a press conference at midday on Sunday.

“I had senior public servants who collected the data, which we've been requesting, at 1am this morning,” Shorten said in the Tuesday interview.

“We got a lot of information by the close of business [Monday] and by the start of [Tuesday] morning, which we didn't have on Sunday, so that's good.”

“I know our public servants are going through to check it because there's 36,900 Medicare numbers which have been [accessed], for example. 

“We want to make sure that we know who these people are so we can make sure that if any hacker tries to use that initial Medicare number to go further, we can red flag it.”

Shorten said that Services Australia will need “about three-to-four weeks” to replace the cards of impacted people.

He indicated the agency would “make slight alterations to their Medicare number” through that process.

Optus on Monday clarified the number of customers in the breach that had identity numbers - current and expired - exposed. It also called in Deloitte Australia to conduct a post-incident review.