The Australian government announced changes Thursday to its telecommunications law to protect vulnerable customers after personal details were stolen in a major cyberattack on the nation's second-largest wireless carrier.
The changes to Telecommunications Regulations allow Optus and other providers to better coordinate with financial institutions and governments to detect and mitigate the risk of cybersecurity incidents, fraud, scams and other malicious cyber activities, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a joint statement.
What this is all about is to try and reduce the impact of this data breach on Optus customers and to enable financial institutions to implement enhanced safeguards and monitoring, Rowland told reporters.
More than one in three Australians had personal data stolen when Optus lost the records of 9.8 million current and former customers including passport, driver's license and national health care identification numbers in a
