The cyber hack undertaken here was not particularly technologically challenging." - Claire O’Neil, Australia's Minister for Home Affairs Four Cybersecurity Strategies for Preventing an Incident like the Optus BreachĮvery Australian business owner that witnessed the Optus fallout likely shared the same thought:
We should not have a telecommunications provider in this country that effectively left the window open for data of this nature to be stolen. "What happened at Optus wasn't a sophisticated attack. An oversight equivalent to the basic security negligence that led to the breach is leaving your car door unlocked and the keys in the ignition while parked on the street overnight. This event was possible because fundamental security protocols were completely overlooked.
This was not a sophisticated attack, as Optus originally claimed. Learn more about how the Optus data breach occurred> This made it possible to automate and rapidly the data theft process, resulting in the theft of almost 10 million records in a relatively short amount of time. Optus stored customer records without unique identifiers. An Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface that allows a solution to communicate with other digital services and products.īut an unsecured API wasn’t the only vulnerability that facilitated this breach. Access to this API was open to anyone who located it on the internet.
This particular API was allegedly used for testing purposes and was not protected by a username or password. The Optus data breach is believed to have been made possible by an unsecured Application Programming Interface (API). In this post, we outline a cybersecurity strategy based on the vulnerabilities that led to Optus’ data breach and best cybersecurity practices to help your business defend against cyberattacks similar to the Optus event. This incident should serve as a sobering wake-up call to all Australian businesses, urging them to evaluate the resilience of their current cybersecurity programs to prevent suffering a similar fate to Optus. Morgan Stanley estimates that up to 30% of victims (or 2.9 million) will forsake Optus for a rival telco provider. It will take some time for Optus to recover from its reputational damage following this event. In other words, this single cybersecurity incident has placed almost half of the Australian population at risk of identity theft scams and financial fraud. 9.8 million current and former Optus customers were impacted by the event, with 2.1 million suffering compromises of highly-sensitive government identification information, like driver’s license numbers and passport numbers. The Optus data breach was the second-largest data breach in Australia.
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