Optus loses court appeal to keep Deloitte cyberattack report secret
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The news: Optus has lost an appeal before the Full Federal Court of Australia in its bid to keep a Deloitte report linked to its 2022 cyberattack under wraps. The report will now be part of an ongoing class action dispute linked to the data breach.
The context: In the three-judge decision handed down this morning, Justice Stewart Anderson, Justice Bernard Murphy and Justice Penny Neskovcin rejected Optus' appeal, ordering the company pay the class action claimants' costs in the document appeal, and be refused leave to appeal the decision.
Optus engaged Deloitte to prepare a report in response to its September 2022 data breach.
In November 2023, following a class action claim against the company over harms to individuals resulting from the data breach, Federal Court of Australia Judge Jonathan Beach said Optus should hand over the report, as well as documents prepared to instruct Deloitte to produce the report and all documents handed to the company in preparing the report.
Optus had claimed legal professional privilege over the material, a claim designed to protect confidential legal advice.
Beach threw out the legal privilege claim on the grounds it was not the "dominant purpose" of the report, with the appeal judges backing Beach's decision today.
The source: Federal Court of Australia
