The OAIC Notifiable Data Breaches Report: January–June 2020

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has issued the Notifiable Data Breaches Report for the period from January to June 2020. The Commissioner, Angelene Falk, has said that malicious or criminal attacks including cyber incidents remain the leading cause of data breaches involving personal information in Australia.

The numbers for the first half of the year are:

1) 518 breaches were reported;

2) Malicious or criminal attacks (including cyber incidents)remain the leading cause of data breaches, accounting for 61% of all notifications;

3) Data breaches resulting from human error account for 34% of all breaches;

4) The health sector is again the highest reporting sector,notifying 22% of all breaches;

5) Finance is the second highest reporting sector, notifying14% of all breaches;

6) Most data breaches affected less than 100 individuals, inline with previous reporting periods;

7) Contact information remains the most common type of personal information involved in a data breach.

Just a reminder, under the NDB scheme, a data breach is an ’eligible data breach’ where:

1) There is unauthorised access to or unauthorised disclosure of personal information (or the information is lost in circumstances where unauthorised access to, or unauthorised disclosure of, the information is likely to occur);

2) A reasonable person would conclude it is likely to result in serious harm to any of the individuals whose personal information was involved in the data breach; and

3) The entity has not been able to prevent the likelihood of serious harm through remedial action.

If an entity is aware that there are reasonable grounds to believe that there has been an eligible data breach, they must notify affected individuals and the OAIC as soon as practicable. The OAIC’s data breach response flowchart illustrates the steps that should be taken in assessing and responding to an eligible data breach.

The press release is available here, and the report here.

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash.