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A cyber attack on Australian listed IP law firm IPH, which includes New Zealand-based AJ Park and Baldwins, is estimated to cost the company $2 million to $2.5 million (pre-tax) in non-underlying costs for the FY23 accounts.
In addition, the disruption caused a service charge budget shortfall of approximately $4.4 million for the impacted businesses of Griffith Hack and Spruson & Ferguson, two branches of the firm, for the month of March 2023.
The dataset stolen originated from Spruson & Ferguson business and contained data relating to the firm’s clients as well as some historical financial and corporate information.
IPH has conducted a ‘substantially complete’ forensic investigation, which has shown that only a limited set of data was downloaded by the unauthorized third party during the event. IPH has worked with Spruson & Ferguson Lawyers to directly contact affected clients and has determined to notify a small number of individuals whose personal information was in the dataset to meet any privacy or data breach obligations.
AJ Park, owned by IPH, also acquired leading New Zealand IP practice Baldwins in 2020.
The investigation is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, and IPH will update the market if there are any material changes to the outcomes set out in this announcement.
The cyber attack incident follows a recent cyber attack on Latitude Financial’s (ASX: LFS) systems, which affected Coles Credit Card holder data. Latitude was a former service provider for Coles Financial Services, and close to 8 million drivers licence numbers were stolen during the hack.
Coles has since changed service providers to Citibank, implying that only Coles Credit customers prior to March 2018 were affected by the cybercrime at Latitude.
