Australia's Largest Pension Funds Under A Co-Ordinated Attack

Australia is being hit by hostile cyber activities with  hackers targeting the largest pension funds in co-ordinated attacks. The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) has said that hackers have attacked  a number of big superannuation funds.

The largest fund, AustralianSuper, which manages $AU365 billion on behalf of 3.5 million members, said that as many as 600 member passwords had been stolen with the intention to access accounts and attempt fraud.

According to the ASFA “While the majority of the attempts were repelled, unfortunately a number of members were affected. Funds are contacting all affected members to let them know and are helping any whose data has been compromised”,

• Australian Retirement Trust, the second-largest fund managing AU$300 billion for 2.4 million members, said it had detected "unusual login activity" affecting "several hundreds" of accounts. 

• Rest Super, the default industry pension fund for retail workers, with AU$93 billion of assets under management, said it has been cyber attacked and that it impacted around 20k accounts, or around 1% of its 2 million members.

• Insignia Financial, which owns the pension fund MLC, has said it detected suspicious login activity on 100 Expand Wrap Platform customer accounts. 

• Hostplus, which has more than 1.8 million members and AU$115 billion under management, also confirmed it suffered an attack. 

As cyber criminals continue to target financial institutions worldwide, theses incidents deliver a reminder of the importance of robust security protocols, especially for organisations managing retirement funds for millions of people.

These events demonstrate the the cyber security maxim that potential targets should implement effective security measures  before an attack takes place, rather than focusing on recovery after the event. 

Superannuation   |    Reuters   |    Silicon  |   Techzine  |   Times of India 

Image: Ideogram

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