After days of avoiding the media, Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson has fronted at least one camera from London overnight.
The airline’s boss is on holidays overseas. Qantas refused to provide another spokesperson despite repeated requests.
Ms Hudson addressed the cyber attack that has compromised the personal data of up to 6 million customers.
But Qantas failed to give other media outlets advance notice of the interview, meaning other journalists weren’t able to put questions directly to the CEO.
This is some of what Ms Hudson had to say from London:
“I’d like to apologise to them. I know this data breach is a serious concern. I know the stress that it has created for many, many millions of customers that we’ve had.”
Hudson on how it happened:
“How this happened was that a cyber criminal infiltrated one of our call centres and was able to access a service platform that enabled them to get access to customer data which was principally customer names, also phone numbers and frequent flyer numbers as well and that is something that we are very concerned about and we are absolutely doing everything that we can to rectify this situation.
“What I can also say, though, is that the threat has been contained and the systems are now secure and our number one focus is to support customers through this process.”
Hudson says no additional customer information has been obtained by the hackers:
“One thing that I would say to those that are concerned is that these cyber criminals did not get access to passport information, credit card information or password information. And so our frequent flyer accounts or your frequent flyer accounts from a customer perspective are secure and I think that that is also a really important part to communicate during this process.”
The Qantas boss says the airline will provide a further update on the cyber attack next week:
“We are looking into next week and what we will be able to tell customers next week is what specific data that pertains to them was potentially breached in this event.
“We have got a Q&A up on our website that if you’ve got questions — 150,000 customers have already accessed that — and that answers all of the possible questions that you might have, but we’ve also got a dedicated phone line that customers can call to get support, but also they’ve got access to ID security support as well if they’ve got any concerns.
“We invest an enormous amount in cyber security in the 10s of millions and that’s been increasing year on year and we take this very seriously.”
She also confirmed 6 million customers had been affected by the cyber attack:
“We have got customer care and also we’ve also got many, many phone people that can answer the phones and will do that in that process. So we are really confident that if a customer wants to contact us, they can and we’ve got the people on standby to do that — to answer your questions, but also to provide any support that they need.”
Despite not fronting the media for days, Ms Hudson had this to say:
“Trust is something that is earned and trust actually also comes from being upfront and transparent and that is what we are doing. We have done that and I have done that through my tenure as CEO and I’m going to continue to do that.
“In this event, we have communicated to customers as soon as we knew the details of the breach. We actually followed up with those customers that were impacted and we are supporting them through that process.”
A Qantas spokesperson told the ABC Ms Hudson would return to Australia from holidays next week and would front the media then.
