The Optus data breach is the biggest cyber security attack in Australia's history.
Millions of Australians, they being Optus' customers, who are caught up in the fiasco, have every right to have grave concerns as to knowing, or at least fearing, that some of their most intimate personal information, like where they live, their driver licence number, their passport number and their date of birth, is now in the hands of some mighty dodgy criminals, also known as computer hackers.
Identity theft on a grand scale is a monumental threat to millions of Australians as a result of this audacious cyber breach from offshore.
Optus is offering its customers impacted by the breach free services for "special protection" against fraud in any event of their bank account being compromised by criminals who manage to hack it.
Which clearly appears to contradict the telco's original public statement, which gave no indication that customer's bank account details were hacked. According to Optus - it was only only personal information of its customers in question, nothing to do with bank accounts.
The delay in notifying the Australian public of the breach, be it only a period of 24 to 36 hours, could now prove to be the biggest and most avoidable PR nightmare for Optus.
Yes, it is understandable that Optus' think-tanks were at a great loss and still trying to determine the precise nature of the breach in the first 12 hours or so after it occured.
12 hours delay would have been acceptable, but not 36 hours to two days.
Heaven only knows who the criminal hackers are responsible for this colossal cyber attack.
Whoever they are, they now know some very personal information about millions of Australians that nobody, especially criminals, should know.
Optus from this moment on has to be fully transparent about everything it is doing or is planning to do to make sure that this can never happen again. That's the least it can do for its customers, past and present.
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