Medibank – one of Australia’s biggest health insurers – comes under cyber attack 

One of Australia’s biggest health insurers, Medibank Private, has disclosed it was the victim of a massive cyberattack and has temporarily shut down some IT systems. 

In a letter to the Australian Stock Exchange, Medibank said it detected unusual activity on its network on Wednesday.

‘At this stage there is no evidence that any sensitive data, including customer data, has been accessed,’ the company said.

CEO David Koczkar apologised for the incident and acknowledged ‘this news may make people concerned’. 

Medibank has more than 3.9million customers. Shares were placed in a trading halt on Thursday.

It follows the country’s biggest ever cyber breach when the personal details of up to 10 million Optus customers were exposed to hackers recently.

Medibank says it has taken immediate steps to ‘contain the incident’ and had brought in expert cybersecurity firms to work on the breach.

The insurer tweeted about 12:15 on Thursday it had taken some of its computer systems offline in response which would affect customers.

‘As a result our ahm and international student policy management systems have been taken offline. We expect these systems to be offline for most of the day,’ Medibank tweeted.

Mr Koczkar said the business was still working to understand the exact nature of the breach. 

‘We recognise the significant responsibility we have to the people who rely on us to look after their health and wellbeing and whose data we hold,’ Mr Koczkar said.

‘We are working around the clock to understand the full nature of the incident, and any additional impact this incident may have on our customers, our people and our broader ecosystem.’