What Optus has learned post-data breach

Close to a year after the Optus data breach where 1.2 million customers were affected, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said she went through a “period of tremendous learning” from the experience. 

During an Optus media briefing, Bayer Rosmarin discussed what she has learned from the experience and the challenges the telco still faces. 

“A lot of people have learned a tremendous amount from what occurred. For us, we were clear that our mission was to protect customers and ensure that no customer came to any harm and that galvanised our team,” she said.

One of her personal learnings was how important it was to build culture within the organisation.

“I am grateful to the whole team for how everybody responded and leaned in. We saw the best of everybody working together. It meant we could deal with the incident very effectively under enormous pressure and continue to focus on customers and have the right priorities all throughout [the process],” she said.

According to Bayer Rosmarin, Optus’ customers appreciated the telcos’ response and from that their metrics have “bounced back strongly”.

“They appreciated that we were transparent in a way that has not been feasible in corporate Australia. We did put their needs first, we communicated strongly that we dealt with things effectively,” she said.  

“But of course, there was a lot of information around some of it right, some of it wrong, we could have managed that better. We could have explained how complex the process was that we're going through.”

For those who aren’t Optus customers, Bayer Rosmarin said it will take longer to rebuild that trust.

“There's obviously a lot of other learnings we took away about the cyber crisis management. Those are all fully being implemented and we are striving to be the best that we possibly can be when it comes to security practices.”

Mirroring Bayer Rosmarin's sentiments, Matt Williams, managing director, marketing and revenue at Optus told Digital Nation there is still more work to do with non-customers.

“[Non-customers] have largely seen some of the media coverage and we want to make sure we're also conveying to them the same view of what we're doing now,” Williams explained.

According to Williams, Optus has been very active with its customers across various dimensions post-breach.

He explained the relationship they had with their customers before the breach has helped in restoring those ties broken post-breach.

“Our customers and those relationships have been very resilient,” he said.

“What we've seen over the last few months is quite a strong bounce back over measures that attract around our brand, customer NPS and satisfaction scores. That is based on continuing to deliver the core things that we know that we want for our customers."