Weeks after the data breach at the Australian telcom giant, Optus, Singapore Telecommunication Ltd, Singlet recently confirmed that its unit, Dialog has faced a cyber-attack. The attack has reportedly affected 1,000 of the company’s current and former employees and about 20 clients.
A similar case of a data breach at Optus, the Australian subsidiary of Singlet took place late this September. The data breach reportedly compromised the personal data of up to 10 million customers, including present and former employees.
Days after the breach, the threat actors withdrew a ransom demand of $1 million from the telecom company, describing there were “too many eyes” on the hacked data. The hackers nonetheless went ahead and leaked customer records of more than 10,000 customers, in order to prove that they actually have access to the data.
“On Saturday 10 September 2022, we detected unauthorized access on our servers, which were then shut down as a preventive measure. Within two business days, our servers were restored and fully operational. We contracted a leading cyber security specialist to work within our IT Team to undertake a deep forensic investigation and continuous monitoring of the Dark Web. Our ongoing investigation showed no evidence of unauthorized downloading of the data[…]On Friday 7 October 2022 we became aware that a very small sample of Dialog’s data, including some employees’ personal information, was published on the Dark Web.” states Dialog regarding the data breach.
Dialog mentioned how its systems were completely independent of Optus and IT unit NCS while assuring that there was in fact no evidence of any link between the data breaches at Dialog and Optus.
"With this being the third large breach impacting the company in the last few years, it sounds like it is time to review the company's cybersecurity program because something is clearly not working," states O'Toole.
"Everyone knows employees are the number one target for criminals looking to steal and compromise an organization's data, so addressing this risk must be the priority," she added.
As per the CEO, one of the prominent solutions to tackle the risk is by deploying encrypted network access and segmentation tools, which encrypt employee credentials and other information so they cannot be hacked or stolen. "This closes doors on attackers, and it will significantly improve Singtel's security defenses against data breaches in the future," she added.
