Medibank chief says paying ransom would encourage other hackers

Medibank says it won't pay a ransom demand for last month's cyber attack on its business that exposed the personal data of around 9.7 million current and former customers.

Key Points

• Medibank chief executive David Koczkar says the hacker probably wouldn't give the data back even if they paid a ransom fee and paying up could instead give other criminals an incentive to do the same thing.
• Around 300,000 claims from offshoot AHM customers and around 20,000 international customers were also accessed.Mr Koczkar says the insurer will work with the federal government and other agencies and companies, and has also launched an external review into the incident.
• Federal Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones announced another step in its anti-scam policy. This follows the introduction of new laws last month that would increase fines for companies that were involved in data breaches, with the maximum fine raised from $2.2 million to at least $50 million

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