Liz MacPherson: Deputy Privacy Commissioner advises on how to keep safe from data breaches

Two major data breaches rattled New Zealand's online privacy last week with both Neighbourly and Manage My Health becoming victims of a cyber attack. 

Personal information and sensitive medical records are now on the dark web after the hackers, who call themselves 'Kazu', issued a low-ball ransom demand of $60,000.

Liz MacPherson spoke to Andrew Dickens about how people and companies can protect their data. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talks EDB. Follow
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
So New Zealand has been rocked by two major data
breaches over the past week. That we had the social
media platform Neighborly forced to shut down at sight after
a breach with user data now reportedly for sale online.
And we've had the fallout over the past week from
the Manage my Health breach still growing with sensitive patient
records including details of head injuries and all sorts of

(00:37):
personal and intimate details now appearing on the dark web.
So we're joined by Liz McPherson, who is the Deputy
Privacy Commissioner. Liz, good morning to you.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
We have New Zealand's right to be concerned about their
data floating around.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Any breach of particularly sensitive health information as a signes concern,
So I used people ship to consent.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Okay, what are we doing about it?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Well, first of all, in terms of the current breaches,
it's the agency's concerns who are responsible for taking account there,
for notifying affected individuals and for putting things right. And we,
as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, work with them
to support them on those things. But in particular for

(01:30):
the individuals who are impacted, there are things that they
should be looking to do in the meantime before they're
even notified to take care for themselves. And what is that, Well,
if you are caught up in the breach, you should
be changing your passwords. Look at your passwords and we

(01:53):
hope because if people listening to this hear nothing else
from me today. In order to protect yourself online, strong passwords,
strong long unique that aren't re used one of your
best protections, as our part Squared managers. But if you
are caught up in a breach, change of passwords, especially

(02:15):
if you reuse them. Monitor for any suspicious activity on
your accounts, your bank accounts, your phone, your email. Let
your bank or your phone provide a know that you
may have been caught up in this breach so that
they can watch out for you too. Myself, I know

(02:39):
that scammers and hackers do not go on holiday and
anytime there's been a data breach, even those who haven't
been impacted by the data breach then find suspicious activities
on their phone. And so if you do get anything
that looks unusual, don't click on it, don't respond to it,

(03:03):
and report it if it's on your phone for examples
as scam.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
All right, Liz makes the list the Deputy Privacy Commissioner.
Thank you so much for your time today. Absolutely this
is warning to other Kiwi businesses. They're out there. They
never take holidays. You need to secure your systems or
you're going to face similar issues.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
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