Australians Warned Cybercrimes Will Become More Frequent

Australia’s cybersecurity minister has described increased data breaches and attacks as “the new world we live in”.

On Thursday morning, Cybersecurity Minister Clare O’Neil confirmed the ransomware attack on Medibank had been referred to the Australian Federal Police after the health insurer confirmed it has received a message that customer data had been removed.

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The attackers wished to negotiate with Medibank, however neither the business or Ms O’Neil have confirmed what the demands were.

Ms O’Neil said the “very best people” were working on the matter, but it was a reminder that cybercrime is rapidly increasing and becomes one of the biggest crime threats across the globe.

"This is the new world that we live in," she said to ABC radio on Thursday.

"We are going to be under relentless cyberattack essentially from here on in and what it means is that we need to do a lot better as a country to make sure that we are doing everything we can within organisations to protect customer data.

"I think combined with Optus, this is a huge wake up call for the country and certainly gives the government a really clear mandate to do some things that frankly probably should have been done five years ago, but I think are still very crucially important."

At this stage, it is unclear how many of Medibank’s 3.8 million customers have been affected and what they could do to try and protect any personal information breached.

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