Asher Moses reports that Sony’s delay of several days in disclosing its mammoth data breach has increased the push for stronger privacy and breach disclosure laws in Australia:
The federal government will introduce laws forcing companies to disclose privacy breaches after Sony revealed that more than 1.5 million Australian user accounts were compromised in the recent attack on its PlayStation Network.
The stolen information include names, addresses, birthdays, email addresses and log-in passwords. Of the 1,560,791 Australian accounts that were affected, 280,000 had credit card details, but these were encrypted and there had been no reports of fraudulent activity, Sony said.
The Privacy Minister, Brendan O’Connor, said he was ”very concerned” about the theft of personal information and expressed disappointment that Sony took ”several days” to inform customers about the breach. This meant a mandatory ”data breach notification” system now ”appears necessary”, he said.
Read more on The Age.