Singtel unit faces cyberattack weeks after Optus data breach | Business and Economy News

Australian unit Dialog says a ‘very small sample’ of its data was published on the dark web.

Singapore Telecommunications Ltd has announced that its Australian unit Dialog faced a cyberattack that potentially affected 1,000 current and former employees and fewer than 20 clients, weeks after a massive data breach at Sydney-based unit Optus.

Singtel said on Monday the attack on Dialog, an Australia-based information technology services consulting firm, was first detected on September 10.

Shares of Singtel were down 1.6 percent at 03:15 GMT.

The breach at Optus, Australia’s second-largest mobile operator, late last month compromised the data of up to 10 million customerstriggering an overhaul of consumer privacy rules to facilitate targeted data sharing between telecommunication firms and banks.

The Singapore-based telecom firm assured that Dialog’s systems were completely independent of Optus and information technology unit NCS and that there was no evidence of any link between the incidents of data breaches at Dialog and Optus.

Last week, Dialog realized “a very small sample” of its data, including some employee personal information, had been published on the dark web.

Singtel had acquired Dialog in April for 325 million Australian dollars ($206.57m).