Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was visibly shaken as she apologised for a sophisticated attack that exposed the personal information of millions of customers.
Ms Bayer Rosmarin, who was emotional when asked about the attack during her tenure, said, “I’m sorry and regretful—it should not have happened.”
“I’m furious that there are people who want to inflict this sort of thing on our consumers.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t prevent this from happening.”
“I’m disappointed that this finding creates negative experiences for our customers rather than the innovative and amazing ones we strive to provide.”
According to Optus, the sophisticated assault came from Europe, with the attackers changing their IP addresses frequently to obfuscate their movements.
CEO Bayer Rosmarin detailed that Optus detected some strange behaviour on Wednesday that was quickly ruled out as a cyber assault.
“The team blocked the virus and began understanding how it had started,” she says.
“I was informed of the situation less than one day before we went live with it to the press, through a phone call from our chief information officer Mark Potter.”
“We were aware something had gone wrong, and the teams began recreating the logs to understand the scale of what had happened.”
“We didn’t realise how important it was until much later that night.”
“We informed everyone by 2 p.m. the following day and worked to put everything in order—it’s likely one of the fastest responses you’ll get in this situation.”
Furthermore, the Optus CEO stresses that the number of customers whose information was stolen has been dramatically overstated.
“We’ve got the worst-case scenario figure of 9.8 million, but we anticipate the number to be far lower after we’ve completed our analysis.”
Bayer Rosmarin also took the opportunity to highlight that Optus is taking steps to improve its security in the wake of the incident.
“We’ve implemented several measures and improvements, including additional layers of authentication and enhanced fraud detection capabilities.”
The CEO ended her remarks by expressing her gratitude to customers who have remained loyal to Optus despite the attack.
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