Insights from the H12021 OAIC Notifiable data breach report

In its latest notifiable data breaches report, The Office of the Australian Information Commission (OAIC), in addition to the usual notification statistics, has given guidance on certain aspects of eligible data breach assessments. It has also identified basic measures businesses should have implemented to deal with data breaches.

Number and causes of notified breaches

446 breach notifications were made in the first half of 2021, which represents a 16% drop in notifications compared to the second half of 2020.

The drop in the number of notifications appears unusual given anecdotal indications that there were more social engineering and cyber incidents in the period.

Consistent with a rise in such incidents, 65% of all notification breaches in the period resulted from malicious or criminal attacks (compared to 57% in the previous period). Human error remains a significant cause of data breaches, accounting for 30% of all breaches notified.