Australian Information Commissioner’s Office Releases Report on Notifiable Data Breach Scheme

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) released its second quarterly statistics report into the Notifiable Data Breach Scheme on 31 July 2018 (Report). The Report provides further insight into the operation of the new scheme, which commenced February this year. The scheme provides for mandatory reporting of ‘eligible’ data breaches to the OAIC and to potentially affected individuals. Whether a data breach is eligible depends on whether the unauthorised disclosure, or loss, of data is likely to result in serious harm to affected individuals.
The OAIC recorded over 200 data breach notifications in the Report period between 1 April and 30 June 2018. In total, the OAIC received 242 data breach notifications in the second quarter of 2018, taking the total number of notifications received since the scheme’s implementation to 305.