Data Security and Privacy at National Australian Bank

IT Audit and Controls

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Data Security and Privacy Issues at National Australian Bank...................................................3
Common Data Security Issues to be Investigated by an Auditor................................................4
National Australian Bank’s Response to the Data Breach..........................................................5
Data Security Measure that National Australian Bank Needs to Adopt......................................6
Role of Cloud Computing in Information Security.....................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The security and privacy of consumer data has become a major concern for business
organisations in the digital age. Business organisations always have to keep updating their
methods of protection and systems to ensure no lapses in data security and privacy occur (Zhang,
2018). This report audits the data security and privacy efforts of the National Australian Bank
(NAB) which is amongst the four largest financial institutions on the basis of customer share,
revenue and market capitalisation in Australia. NAB was founded in 1982 and operates from its
headquarters in Melbourne, Australia. As per the latest estimates, the NAB employs around
35,063 individuals for its operations.
Data Security and Privacy Issues at National Australian Bank
Business organisations can only function successfully in the consumer markets if their
customers and the general public have trust and confidence in their operations. This is especially
true for the banking and financial service industries, as consumers have to provide their personal
as well as financial information to businesses for their operations, showing trust and confidence
in the business organisation’s ability to protect and secure the data from external forces. On 26th
July, 2019, the National Australian Back which is amongst the four largest financial service
institutions in Australia, found out that there had occurred a data breach in its systems through
which the personal data of more than 13,000 of their customers had been uploaded to the servers
of two data service organisation without the explicit authorisation of NAB (Bertino and Ferrari,
2018). This was a major blunder for the NAB’s operations and effectively was a betrayal of the
trust and confidence that customers showed in the NAB to protect and secure their private
personal data.
As the data had been uploaded without the appropriate authorisation of the NAB’s
leadership and management, it was a breach in their data security policies and systems. Through
this data breach, the personal information of more than 13,000 of their trusting customers was
leaked to the servers of external data service companies. This personal data contained personal
information that NAB collected from its customers when they set up their financial account such
as the customer’s official name, date of birth, contact details, government issued identification