After the Medibank hack exposed the health details of 9.7 million Australians... cybersecurity and privacy experts are warning that health data remains a key target for hackers.
Around 40 per cent of the population was affected by the Medibank hack.
And it's raised concerns about another health database - My Health Record.
David Vaile - chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation - says it's possible the federal government's My Health Record could be subject to a "massive data breach".
"The security model for My Health Record is appalling. You know, I've been monitoring it and trying to engage with this discussion, you know, wearing several hats over about 10 or 15 years. And they ended up with something that has a sort of a default access - that's to not tens of thousands of people, but probably hundreds of thousands of people."
The online database was set up in 2012 by the federal government.
It contains the profiles of more than 23.4 million Australians with information like specialist reports, test results, prescriptions, dental records, billing details, and notes on symptoms and diagnoses.
Dr David Glance is the director of the Centre for Software Practice at the University of Western Australia.
He says the security infrastructure for My Health Record is fairly strong, but contains less information than perhaps Medibank.
"My Health Record isn't exactly heavily used still, despite all the attempts for the government to make it something useful. So, actually the amount of information in there is somewhat limited, and certainly would be less problematic than Medibank, for example, who have all the claims data, and data about mental health, and abortion procedures, and other things."
