The future of data breach disputes

The Medibank Private data breach in October 2022 affected the personal information of 9.7 million Australians, including a wide range of sensitive health information. Your practice may not have quite that many patients, but the incident still serves to highlight the importance of cybersecurity for any business which holds large volumes of sensitive health information. The legal impact of the breach, however, is still to come, as the health insurer faces class actions and regulatory proceedings that could change the legal landscape for data breach disputes.

A data breach can cause harm to affected individuals in many ways. The publication of sensitive health information (for example, that an individual had an abortion, is suffering a sexually transmitted disease, or has a mental illness) can cause distress, psychological harm and reputational damage. The misuse of an individual's identity documents can cause financial loss. In some cases, the disclosure of an