Australia’s largest bank Commonwealth lost 12 million user bank data

Foreign media BuzzFeed reported that Australia’s largest commercial bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), confirmed that two storage tapes containing customer’s name, address, account number, and transaction details record from 2004 to 2016 were identified in a data center transfer mission. Its subcontractor Fuji-Xerox was lost. Including at least 12 million users of bank transaction data.

When the bank became aware of the incident, it commissioned an independent profiling investigation by KPMG, a tripartite statistical company, to understand the situation and notified the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). After the investigation, KPMG found that the storage tape was likely to have been disposed of and was difficult to retrieve.

Federal Bank’s Angus Sullivan stated that these lost records did not contain any information that could compromise the security of the customer’s account, such as passwords or PINs. There is currently no evidence of how the user data involved has been used or any suspicious circumstances have occurred. “We take the protection of customer data very seriously and incidents like this are not acceptable. We want to assure our customers that no action is required and we apologize for any concern the incident may cause.”